I keep reading that the future of the US (or of the Western Civilization, as some have put it) depends on the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs but I can’t bring myself to feel any enthusiasm for that particular election.
If the heroes defending the Thermopylae Pass are going to be Romney, Graham, Inhofe, Murkowski, etc we are doomed.
Those two Georgia senators themselves have just voted for an expansion of legal immigration and are not known to have done anything to support Trump’s legal efforts to investigate fraud. I even doubt that they will vote for a repeal of Section 230 in order to have the defense budget passed, as Trump has sensibly demanded.
Why should any real Trumpist (as opposed to fans of Trump-the-person) vote for them?
I don’t know if vote fraud (which most certainly existed) was more widespread than usual or mattered much for the final results but a number of very specific accusations have been provided by multiple witnesses of Rudy Giuliani’s team and it doesn’t look like anybody has much interest in investigating them. How difficult would it be to find out if that truck driver really transported thousands of ballots from NY to PA or those Georgia elections workers recorded by CCTV really took bags of ballots from under a table and started counting them when all observers had been sent home?
Quite frankly, I think that this Republican Party deserves to lose and if I were a Georgia voter, I would probably opt for an accelerationist abstention.
Never heard of it but I took a stab at wiki plot review (spoilers ahead)
This lunar colony, which collapsed due to an environmental crisis, has become a refuge for “sundogs”, criminals, dissidents and wanderers. There he meets Kitsune, a woman modified by the Shapers to be an ideal prostitute.
Sold! Lunar ideal prostitutes are awesome.
Lindsay runs away from what he sees as a hopeless battle, but Nora decides to stay in the Rings, where they had built their lives and family, to fight Constantine and his militant government.
Simp. Female love interest has bigger balls than main hero.
However, Constantine discovers Mavride’s plan to defect and forces her to kill herself. Consumed with hatred, Lindsay for the first time confronts his former friend directly, arranging a duel with him using an ancient alien artifact called the Arena. While Lindsay wins, the Arena leaves both him and Constantine catatonic
Now that’s simping on female love interest’s part. There is never a need to kill yourself – nature will always to do it for you. If you are bored, go rob a bank and police will either accomplish your goal or you get to have a lot of fun. But yeah, never kill yourself, rob banks instead. More fun and same goal will be accomplished.
Also, duels are old fashioned. Though COVID separation distance proper.
Constantine believes that Lindsay will never see Europa, that he will leave in the end rather than see his cause through to fruition, just as he always had. He also reveals that Vera Constantine’s DNA comes as much from Lindsay as Vera Kelland. Philip reconciles with Abelard, then commits suicide.
Mega simp. The entire point of my existence is that my great grand spawn become mermaids/men on Europa. To not go through with that vision when it is at hand is mega pussy move. Useless losers.
But I’m glad others are working on it, even if they chicken out at the end 🙂
It’s hard to remove an incumbent from office. So if the two Democrats are elected, they likely will be in office for decades to come.
If the GOP loses the seats, they will consider the reason not as (dejected base voters) but as (alienated suburban moderates). So they will pander even harder to blacks.
Donors could also conclude that the GOP can no longer be relevant in most states, further shifting them towards neoliberal Dems.
The momentum is also important for the off-year and midterm elections.
Fraud is only relevant, if it is something that liberals will accept as evidence. The problem is that liberals will use the Sagan Standard. And just as Sagan’s intrinsic bias against Christianity, liberals have an intrinisic bias against our claims. So you can never have any proof to satisfy them.
A positive knock-on effect of the Trump defeat, is that a Le Pen victory in 2022 is more probable. Moderate French voters would presume that any of her excesses would be contained by a liberal government in Washington.
The question is whether she can maneuver to the left on Macron wrt economics.
If the heroes defending the Thermopylae Pass are going to be Romney, Graham, Inhofe, Murkowski, etc we are doomed.
You know it brother.
While I’m quite sympathetic towards Trump (he yelled at Federal Reserve to lower rates, how many Presidents even comprehend it’s important?), currently I’m hoping for Democratic party wins. We are going to need a whole lot more stimulus going forward and Republicans are not helpful.
To rescue global economy, money printer must go brr.. and my friend corona chan is going to make it happen, one way or another.
You should read the book. It’s worth it. It has been written in the 80ies and it’s still relevant, which makes it a master piece of transhumanist Sci Fi.
The citizens of the Coalition view the gleisners and their colonial aspirations as puerile and ultimately futile, believing that only “bacteria with spaceships. . . knowing no better and having no choice” would attempt to deface the galaxy with mass colonisation, especially if virtual realities afford limitless possibilities at a small fraction of the total resource-consumption.
Interesting take. I am firmly in the “bacteria with spaceships” camp. To explain my view more clearly, in StarCraft, between Protoss, Terrans, and Zerg, I firmly root for the Zerg. As such, resource constant is irrelevant – universe contains infinite energy and resources. There is no such thing as resource constraint in the real world. Resources are infinite. All that matters is deployment and purpose.
While virtual reality is awesome fun (nothing beats watching the stars at Darnielle’s Progress landing pad on Maia system in the Pleiades in VR), we do need to advance real world technology to make this vision happen in real time eventually.
Does it matter what Establishment Republicans would conclude from a substantial abstention rate of Republicans in the GA runoffs?
They would be out of power at a national level, with almost half the country believing (right or wrong) that the presidential elections have been stolen and losing all faith in the system. A Democratic trifecta would do absolutely nothing to win these people back, they would instead alienate them even more, and conditions could be rife for a reshuffle of the GOP, perhaps along the lines of the original Trump 2016 ideas.
But I could be totally wrong. I am far from being an expert in political matters. Still, a slim Senate majority that includes the characters I have mentioned above is such a sad situation that I would not bother much keeping it.
Yeah, but we will probably converge technologically speaking before the nuclear war. As far as WW2 goes, vatniks are correct about the Lend Lease, it really didn’t amount to much for USSR.
But what mattered? Soviet factories were designed by American engineers, like that Stalingrad tank factory, the only reason why T34 tanks could leave that factory into war zone was because Americans from Gary Indiana (International Harvester Corp) designed and built it.
But American Corporations in Great Depression era didn’t do it for free hence Soviet policy.
What I’m trying to say is that nobody was evil there – all were trying to make a living. American corporations needed golden червонец (10 ruble gold money) because Great Depression ruined their profits. And Soviets needed most modern Fordism and Taylorism advanced mass manufacturing technology and management. Both got what they wanted. Germans lost in the end.
It might but it won’t be enough. Employers will simply automate before they pay that wage.
Which is why I support basic income and oppose minimum wages and “tax the rich” schemes. Leftists are incorrect when they think that wage floor will solve our macroeconomic problem.
To rescue global economy, money printer must go brr..
I am not going to try to take you out from your world where human wants are limited but the ability of governments to accumulate debt and print money without negative consequences is unlimited (an idea that even Paul Krugman would laugh at). I have more urgent things to do.
However, I would like to ask you a question, if you don’t mind.
As you know, in the past centuries the economy has shown a continuous bubble and bust pattern. There are records of these cycles starting in the Netherlands, Sweden or England as far back as the 17th-18th centuries. Since the ’20s of this century multiple strategies have been tried to combat the recession part of the cycle: public spending in the 30s, full fledged Keynesian economics in the post war-70s period, supply side economics in the 80s, liberalization in the 90s-2000s, monetary expansion since the latest great recession,… but nothing has been able to eliminate the business cycle. There is zero reason to believe that there won’t be another endogenous global recession (not exogenous, as the one caused by Covid-19) in the near or medium future.
Does a person like you think that this cyclic pattern is inevitable? If so, what exact law of nature do you think that has caused it to persists over centuries?
Le Pen has gradually deradicalised the party compared to her father. Macron is now doing things she haven’t even proposed (shutting down mosques). Her economics are even more neoliberal than his, which is idiotic given that her voter base is mostly from the rust belt. Macron has higher approval ratings at this stage of his presidency than comparable presidents, and the covid bump is long gone, so it has staying power.
In many ways, I am surprised that people still talk about her as a radical. She’s basically an edgy neoliberal in most matters and of course an ardent Zionist. The only real distinction between the two is that she’s eurosceptic, but that has less salience in continental Europe than in the UK because France has always been more powerful within the EU than the Brits, who mostly spent their time looking in after a Paris-Berlin compromise was a done deal.
And people with your naïve analysis forget that the 2nd round matters, not the first.
Pan Jianwei has led a group of Chinese researchers into achieveing photon-based quantum supremacy. The details are here.
Google’s Sycamore last year claimed supremacy too – although IBM had some choice words for that.
What differentiaties the two is that they are using different methods. Photon-based supremacy was thought to be impossible by some (looking at you, Gil Kalai), or at least highly impractical. One way to think about these things is that you’re essentially seeing two expedititons land at the same continent but at opposite ends. It remains to be seen which form of quantum computing becomes the dominant one.
The term ‘quantum supremacy’ was invented in 2012 by John Preskill and it can fool people into beliving that they can supersede classical computers in everything. In reality, they are still only demonstrating supremacy over classicals in a strict defined set of tasks. We’re still a long ways off from a general computing paradigm replacement.
Nevertheless, to get to that place you have to start beating classical computers in more limited tasks and that is now happening with increasing frequency. These are very exciting times and I’m glad we’re seeing innovation from China.
Together with the DeepMind announcement that they have made protein folding significantly easier, which was praised by typically skeptical voices (certainly SSC consensus was that this was a Big Deal), it makes it harder for those who peddle ideas of ‘industrial malthusianism’ and other nonsense. What is different is that the fairy tale that the whole ’emerging world’ would catch up is being exposed as the fraud as it always was, including for places like Russia. So those who live in these stagnating areas want to paint the world black because their own country is doing poorly, and will likely continue to. In reality, innovation is ongoing and so is convergence. Just not there.
Actually, there is a Canadian company called Xanadu, which claims to developed a quantum computer with the same concept as the Chinese prototype, that has more flexible real-world applications, due to being easier to program to perform different computations. And Ionq claim to develop a quantum computer that brings forth better real-world performances using the trapped ion method, although its amount of qubits is that as much.
Paris is to remove around half of its 140,000 car parking spaces under a scheme by mayor Anne Hidalgo to make the city more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly.
Hidalgo made transport and pollution central to her campaign through the “15-minute city” concept. This envisages a city where inhabitants can meet all needs – food, work, recreation, culture and so on – within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from home.
During the election, Hidalgo said: “It’s out of the question to think that arriving in the heart of the city by car is any sort of solution.”
Extremely powerful and extremely correct. Car cucks need to be bullied out of the idea that they should have an equal footing with cyclists or pedestrians. EVs are merely a stop-gap solution. In the long term, cars should only be used in rural areas and between cities, not within them.
It’s long past time to correct the single biggest urban policy disaster of the 20th century: the cancerous car-centric culture that has destroyed the beauty of our great cities.
In many ways, I am surprised that people still talk about her as a radical. She’s basically an edgy neoliberal in most matters and of course an ardent Zionist.
Is there anybody in the European (or British) far right who isn’t an ardent Zionist?
The place where I live have tried a mild version of this, excluding cars from the city center. The net result seems to be that people drive off to the shopping barns on the city edge instead.
Will there be swarthy gangs carrying the organic quinoa and other everyday supplies to the 15-min shop as the Green Party rep cracks the whip?
I don’t see why commodities should collapse as a result of a deterioration in trade with China (if that is what you are suggesting). China’s demand won’t have lessened any, and another countries cannot so straightforwardly ramp up production of certain commodities, so if China buys more from other countries, other countries, in turn, will buy more from Australia, so it more or less evens out.
Any ‘property bubble’ (Australia’s been in one extended ‘bubble’ for 20 years now) is less of a concern to me than the phenomenally high levels of household debt. I’m not exactly sure what that portends, but it’s hard to see it as anything positive.
Australia’s environment is no more vulnerable today than in the past. It’s just that this stuff gets more play nowadays, with so many environmentalist catastrophists predicting the end times are upon us.
The issue with desalination has never been the technology. It’s always been social values and political will – ie obstructionist greenie assholes and their media sympathizers.
Democrat senators will be worse, but not sufficiently worse to justify voting for cuckservatives. It hardly matters what the cuckservative establishment “concludes” was the reason for their defeat, since they’re committed to those conclusions regardless of any evidence to the contrary (of which there is plenty).
Also, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the MAGA faction of the GOP can makes its own voice heard these days in a way that wasn’t true four years ago. So there will be plenty of opportunity to counter the cuckservative narrative about why Republicans lost the senate (if they do) with arguments like: cuck senators refused to back Trump, so voters refused to back cucks.
And really, the idea that more ‘Macaca bills’ (a la Mike Lee) are going to do anything good for whites (or even Americans more broadly) is too stupid for words.
Nah, it is a real problem with cost. Unless you mean “obstructionists” by anti-nuclear activists, sure, but its a very real cost to endlessly distill water.
An estimated 250 million (25 crore) people took part in the strike,[4][5] which Jacobin estimated as the largest in history.[6] The strike was followed by a march to New Delhi, which arrived there on 30 November with tens of thousands of farmers surrounding Delhi,[7] increasing to hundreds of thousands by 3 December.
All-India Motor Transport Congress has warned that they would shut operations if the Central government did not accede to the farmers’ demand to repeal the three farm laws passed in September
I was born in the early Soviet 70ies in Moscow. I’ve grown up at a time when it was quite normal for Soviet kids to be reading Lem, Kir Bulychev, Yefremov, the Strugatsky brothers etc. My parents had an inscription for the Soviet Sci Fi review Iskatel’ and the scientific popularization review Znanye Sila. They were typical Soviet educated scientific/technical intelligentsia with average Soviet salaries, who cared about and enjoyed the typical things these NII types cared about.
As a family we believed in progress in its form described by Vernadsky. Lithosphere >> Biosphere >> Noosphere. The humans evolving further and colonizing the solar system and then swarming the galaxy in the twenty first century was normal for us. By the end of the eighties it seemed absolutely inevitable.
But then Perestroika came and we learned a lot about human nature that we didn’t know before. Attitudes that we thought were buried in the Dostoevsky’s times (I exaggerate here, but I believe you get my point) came back with a vengeance. Some humans revealed themselves as greedy, lying and aggressive “naked apes “. They were only looking for self gratification and personal profit. They did not care for the stars, they were really not that interested in knowing anything that did not result in more moneys, more consumption and pleasure (sex mainly). Humans appeared as perverted animals.
That is where the philosophical and religious aspects of the life became self-evident and absolutely outstanding: how do you live your life without becoming the self-indulgent “naked ape”? How do you organize yourself and your loved ones to stay human in the better sense of the term? How do you survive the aggressive and aggravated ego trip our civilization embarked upon and that we keep pretending is progress?
I no longer believe that we will be able to reach for the stars as a species. Perhaps some of us will, but the immense majority of us will live and die on this planet. And this is simply due to the fact that as a species we are not evolved enough – either intellectually or morally – to become a spatial civilization.
We still need resources though, so we will probably send automated AI probes to gather the resources that we can grab from the solar system. We will continue surviving with a lower consumption level. We will decrease in numbers. Perhaps we will even go extinct.
The singularity was the last chance we had to become something more than a “naked ape “, we are missing that chance. As a species we didn’t have in us what is needed to get to the next stage of development.
People frequently say that China is severely lacking in soft power, but I am not sure thats true.
For instance, otherwise sensible people on Unz go full retard when it comes to China, like otherwise excellent and sensible commenter dfordoom, who is one of the best commenters on Unz. Thats some pretty incredible soft power.
And in general China is hugely popular with the “asshole brigade” on Unz, and with people on Unz in general.
People who for instance severely criticize US suppression of free speech will completely ignore Chinas Social Credit system. Thats some fantastic soft power right there.
I would say right now China is beginning to fill the role of Communist Russia in its early years. People were looking for alternatives to Western capitalism, and anything that offered itself, however implausibly, as an alternative, was embraced by people absolutely desperate to find a force for “good” in the world.
Like in early Soviet days, all evidence to the contrary was ignored and people clung to their illusions.
The truth is mankind cannot handle too much reality and they need illusions. Hating the West, they cannot handle the fact that China is as bad or worse, and in the same metrics even. That would simply be too bleak.
And of course, the unscrupulous can easily exploit your dreams and illusions, your fantasies and hopes.
But to return to my point – it is wrong to bemoan China’s supposed lack of soft power. China has tremendous soft power, the kind that feeds on illusions (which may be the best kind as it is untethered from reality), but at the moment, China’s soft power seems mostly confined either to losers or the “asshole brigade” who cheer its assertive disregard for norms.
China’s soft power seems to have a human quality problem at the moment. Will that change?
The US is said to have tremendous soft power, but has it ever commanded the blind admiration- the willingness to simply ignore massive faults – that Soviet Russia had? It seems to me that the US was always criticized even when it was admired.
Soviet Russia was based on an “ideal” – and thus commanded blind admiration of the kind the US, based more on realistic acceptance of human failings like greed, could never do, however successful and dynamic it was.
China seems not to be based on an ideal – unless it is technocrats efficiency, which I think is pretty thin stuff for most people to find the Meaning Of Life in. Still, a small number of people will find this sufficient.
And in its role as opposition to the US, still more people will find in China a Life Raft to cling to.
But I don’t think it will command the level of enthusiasm- among high quality prople – that Soviet Russia did.
I think the two ways to command enthusiasm from high quality people is 1) Have a lofty “ideal” 2) Be very dynamic and creative. Soviet Russia had #1 and America had #2.
China has technological efficiency and social control.
People who think China can simply create good art to gain soft power – engineer its way into soft power- do not understand cause and effect. Good art is an effect of dynamic systems with a lot of creative freedom. The same qualities that lead to dynamic success in technology and business spill over into art and soft power.
You cannot engineer your way into soft power. It is a spill over from a general system. Your soft power os inherently limited by uour system – there are barriers you cannot engineer your way out of.
“Idealism” has inherent soft power. We all want to think humans are perfectible. Soviet Rusdia had inherent appeal. Dynamic creativity has inherent appeal.
Social control and technocrats efficiency – do they have inherent appeal? It must be admitted, to some people, yes. But will it ever generate enthusiasm among large numbers of high quality people, like Soviet Russia did, like America did, like England did?
Japan, for instance is admired for its style, its dynamic creativity, and its cult of craftsmanship and perfection. These are all inherently appealing qualities.
Does China have inherently appealing qualities? It might develop them, if it relaxed conscious control and allowed more freedom. In fact, I am confident it would develop them. But the whole question of “engineering” soft powerfor China is to mistake the issue. To develop soft power China must precisely relax the engineering approach.
You are partially correct, but you miss something important: without a very rapid moral improvement our civilization will not be able to use these technologies to our betterment. Our abilities to control and steer these developments are limited because we are too self-centered and too hedonistic.
That is why people far more intelligent than both you and I are, have decided to take control of the fourth technological revolution and prevent the Singularity or at least delay it. I think that they will impose ecological malthusian social organization upon us as a species to slow and control the technological transformation.
I am not sure how you can say that, when I am trying to rehabilitate child raising and family life as joyful?
I think the main reason family life has declined is because the stress was on it being a duty. But duties are boring. Didn’t Jesus come to preach freedom from the Law?
Single life is fun till about 25. One of life’s top ten pleasures hiking through nature with fresh eyed, adventurous kids.
We have been pushing the Survive Paradigm exclusively. In this paradigm, it is more important for a woman to have a career – to work for her survival – than to enjoy her life, which would mean having kids.
I think modern women – especially elite women – are almost guilty at choosing children over career, because that means choosing the thrive paradigm over the survive paradigm. That means choosing pleasure – that dreaded thing – over duty. (Although things are changing, and elite women are having more kids. The Thtive Paradigm in general, I notice with pleasure, is gaining an ever growing foothold in elite culture, and it is the sad lower classes who have not yet gotten the message)
Who are we to enjoy life? We must toil, for the day is short, and the threats many and unrelenting. At all costs, survive! But such a life is proving not worth the candle.
Also – isn’t a more livable city like Copenhagen without cars, life promoting and family friendly? Isn’t that precisely the point? It promotes healthy exercise, its beauty nourishes the soul, and the availability of local shops promotes social mingling and builds community.
You are a strange fish, Altan, a strange fish indeed. You are trapped, my poor fellow, in the Survive Paradigm.
You might want to at least get my terminology correct (Malthusian Industrialism). Which I have always positioned as a possible scenario, not as a prophecy.
Rest of your text is attacking straw men as usual for you.
Poland is the Afghanistan of Europe, i.e., unconquerable, except briefly
by historic standards. Germans, the fun people that they are, exerted all
their power over the last 1200 years trying to destroy Poland, all to no
avail. Note that the Germans easily rolled over the Slavic tribes that
inhabited the area between the Elbe and the Oder rivers, but not
Poland. Swedes, who gleefully collaborated with Hitler, invaded Poland
in the 1650s, killing directly or indirectly 4 million people, that is one-third the
population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Russian
tsars, 90% Germanics, also tried to conquer Poland, and partly
succeeded but only for a hundred years. And where are Germany
and Austria today? Largely reduced to non-entities by world
standards while Poland remains unbowed, its language and culture
intact, and rapidly becoming the finance, real estate, and entertainment
center of Central Europe (e.g., in the last few years Poland has become
the largest exporter of video games in Europe). Jews, another fun
people, also did their bit trying to destroy Poland in the postwar
years, using the subterfuge of Marxism, i.e., Christianity Lite. No one
is as smart as the Jews, so the Jews came up with the idea that
torturing their Christian opponents in postwar Poland would do
wonders for the Marxist cause. That was indeed very smart.
Currently, the globohomo forces are trying to conquer
Poland, as they had recently conquered Germany. But
gay marriage succeeded in the West not because people wanted it
but because the marriage certificate, with the high rates of divorce made
easy in the 1960s through the subterfuge of irreconcilable
differences, is not worth the paper it’s printed on. In other words,
the marriage vow no longer means anything in the West, so you
might as well give it to the people of LGBT persuasion. In fact, Americans
are actually losing interest in marriage, fewer than 50% of adults
are married, so the gay interest in marriage looks positively weird.
You wanna get on a woman’s nerves in the U.S.? Tell her that seeing
a man getting married is like watching a lamb being led to slaughter.
I tried it. They are not amused!
Ugh too bipolar, first you were a starry eyed optimist, then you became a simian pessimist. Speculating about future and fabricating hypothetical models is its own fetter. Its a cliche to state that no one knows what future holds, but its a good cliche, still there is one thing that I surely know about the future, and its that there will always
be surprises.
I’m not trying to teach China anything. In fact, I am saying treating soft power as an engineering problem for China, as I often see, is the wrong approach.
China has very appealing qualities, just, they aren’t being allowed to blossom forth under the heavy hand of the current regime.
What is required is less heavy handed engineering, and more freedom.
I suppose it is debatable if a more walkable city is necessary worse for family life. After all, people did have large families before there were cars and the Twitter commentator @WrathOfGnon, who most likely had both right-wing and pro-family views, is very supportive of more walkable cities.
I can see the challenges with a larger family with public transportation, but I think they do not have to be insurmountable challenges, provided that there was effort placed into it. Unfortunately, I don’t think that it’ll happen.
At least two factors. One is the fact that the Polish elites are
descended from the steppe warriors, Sarmatians if you like.
Hence the warrior spirit is alive and well in Poland. The same
applies to Hungary (“Polak, Węgier, dwa bratanki”). Much
can be cited as evidence, e.g., obsession with horses and horsemanship.
I know someone who trains people in horsemanship, combined
with archery in his case. Great battles, like the Battle of Grunwald (1410)
in which Poland defeated the Teutonic Knights, are regularly re-enacted
employing thousands of horses. High status of women since women
would participate in battles alongside men is another piece of evidence.
Heraldry is another.
Second factor is Catholicism. Protestantism is weak because there
is a thin line between Protestantism and agnosticism. Standard joke
is that Episcopalian/Anglican churches should have a question mark
instead of a cross on their steeples – nobody is certain of anything.
Eastern Orthodoxy is also weak (I know I’m going to offend a lot of
people here). Orthodoxy is too mystical, services last too long, you
have to stand or even prostrate yourself, etc It’s impractical for
the modern era. More importantly, it lacks a theoretical foundation
that in Catholicism is provided by Thomism, i.e., philosophy of
Thomas Aquinas who basically constructed a synthesis of Aristotelianism
and Christianity. Maritain, Gilson, and others developed Neo-Thomism
which updated Thomism for modern needs. Catholic ethics is basically
virtue ethics – moderation in all things. This has a powerful implication –
avoid all sorts of addiction, esp. to sex and to drugs. Protestantism
completely lacks the idea of moderation, one reason why Americans
are so addicted to drugs. Poland has low divorce rates (and virtually
no abortions. They went too far here causing current demonstrations).
This means that the idea of marriage still means something there. Poland
may adopt a moderate solution – a facsimile of marriage of some sort –
but I doubt that full-fledged gay marriage will be adopted anytime soon.
Americans are weaklings – the globalists tell them to jump, and
Americans ask, “How high?”. The current voter fraud scandal shows
that Americans, like the Brits, will meekly accept whatever the globalists
cook up for them.
Actually, I am beginning to think that the attraction of the Chinese system – illusory as it is – may serve a very useful role in inspiring reform in the West. Its well known that much of the social welfare reforms the West adopted in the early 20th century were out of fear of communisf Russia.
Illusions can serve useful purposes, just as the attraction of the Soviet system did.
But for that to work, China has to become attractive to high quality people, like Russia was, not just the Unzo-trash. Only then will it be seen as enough of an ideological threat to inspire reform.
See Altan, one must always look for the dialectic aspect of any situation, for that side of a thing that seems to oppose its surface appearance.
I am simply shocked that it comes at a cost. I had no idea. I had been assuming it was a complete freebie. I’ll have to reevaluate everything I ever thought about it now.
It’s not enough to just exclude cars. You need to understand that 20th century cities were built around car ownership. That was a normative choice. This is even more true in the US but even “old European” cities had plenty of destruction. Stockholm unilaterally tore down entire districts of beautiful buildings to make way for shabbily constructed neighbourhoods with a car-centric focus.
That’s why the Paris mayor spoke of the “15 minute city”. It’s bringing about a whole ecosystem of changes that makes it unnecessary to go far beyond where you live. Just doing one change – banning cars from the city center – but not doing the much harder peripheral work of re-organising how the entire city is structured – is doomed to fail. And that is exactly what happened judging by your own story.
Urban planning takes time. Decades for deep and thorough changes. We cannot fool ourselves this would be an overnight transformation. Just undoing the catastrophic damages to our cities will be yeoman’s work, let alone improve upon that. There can be no illusions about the magnitude of the task ahead.
Yowza, yet another falling out? Could it possibly be that I am the last of your (semi) regular readers that doesn’t hate your guts? (Perhaps you think I do, the way you rudely mischaracterized my casual hope that Biden push Russia back behind the Urals as a desire to annihilate Russia (sheesh!), but I most certainly don’t.)
I am not going to try to take you out from your world where human wants are limited but the ability of governments to accumulate debt and print money without negative consequences is unlimited (an idea that even Paul Krugman would laugh at). I have more urgent things to do
Paul Krugman thought the internet was a fad, so much for his creative thinking. As for negative consequences, what would those be? High inflation? High inflation grows nominal GDP like crazy which reduces debt to GDP ratio. This is what US did in the 50’s to get rid of WW2 debt – set those war bond rates at 3.75% and let inflation loose at 10%. Bondholders kinda got screwed, costs of living doubled between mid 40′ s and 50’s but the economy boomed. High inflation will be a solution to the problem of debt rather than a negative consequence.
Hyperinflation? Will the likes of Amazon and Walmart hike prices by 100% daily? More importantly, will they hike wages by as much to keep up? Would they refuse to accept USD and only take Bitcoin or something? Why? They are owned by $billionaires in USD, if Bezos sales plummet if he refuses dollars his wealth will be ruined. I don’t see it happening – the rich are not stupid.
Does a person like you think that this cyclic pattern is inevitable? If so, what exact law of nature do you think that has caused it to persists over centuries?
Well yeah, that’s bank credit for you. Banks create money when they lend against assets. This causes money to flow to people with assets (aka rich) which is very convenient and nice if you are rich. Money flowing from the banks to the rich cause the asset values to rise, which enables the rich to gain even more money/credit against the rising asset value which causes asset values to rise in a spiral we call an asset bubble. Because the rich hoard all the money income growth in the economy stalls and incomes from assets are no longer sufficient to pay the banks. This we call a bust, when the bubble pops.
Business cycle is inevitable as long as money supply is controlled by the bunch of retarded hamsters we call “banks”, and that’s an insult to a retarded hamster, to be compared to a banker. Banks are stupid, evil, and obsolete, we don’t need them anymore.
In the future, money won’t be this debt/credit asset based ledger entry anymore. Money will be a regulated utility just like electricity. Federal Reserve will create digital accounts for all citizens and will fund them appropriately (to achieve Fed inflation target). With money pumped to the bottom of the economy rather than given to only those with assets, it will ensure incomes are there to make whatever payment is required (regulated with interest rates). Banks as we know it will be nationalized and converted into Reserve branches. Fractional reserve lending will be abolished and replaced with full reserve banking (banks will actually have to lend deposits rather than create money). Instead of raising debt, corporations will rely more on equity for funding.
Current political economy is structured around debt/asset idea. This makes business cycle inevitable. In the future, political economy will be structured around income/equity idea. This just might abolish the business cycle, who knows.
It is very important that every single scenario to prevent a Joe Biden Presidency or make it’s life as hard as possible happens.
My instinct was correct that Joe Biden’s administration of Liberals and Jews will execute plans to destroy and eliminate Republika Srpska and the Serb nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina whenever it gets the chance or feels like it. Note: Daniel Serwer = triple brackets …
Even though all this sounds benign, harmless and boring behind catchphrases like “reforming Bosnia”, “fixing corruption”, “revising Dayton” and etc. it’s extremely sinister and dangerous. They will aim to eliminate and destroy Rebpulika Srpska and any Croat autonomy/self-rule that lets Serbs and Croats in Bosnia have limited means of freedom from Muslims, followed by a NATO annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to further pressure Serbia to end its “military neutrality” and be annexed by NATO. This is especially why they feel the need to destroy Republika Srpska because it has done its best to resist NATO integration and Muslim encroachment. Despite for a few years under some worthless traitor leading Srpska who allowed NATO military exercises with depleted uranium to be done on Manjaca even though NATO bombed it in 1995, Manjaca has stood proudly as an outpost of Serb strength and sovereignty in Bosnia.
There are clearly already serious plans to send US and NATO soldiers to Brcko district in advance to try and choke and starve out Republika Srpska to not be able to resist its elimination without war. Although the few hundred NATO troops currently in Bosnia could easily be defeated by Serbs, the problem is that severe economic sanctions on Serbs and way more US ground troops followed by a merciless bombing campaign will come. Even though Serbia has bought Chinese S-300/S-400 equivalents, those need to be physically delivered to Serbia ASAP because they will hopefully serve as a good deterrent to this planned NATO aggression against Serbia and Serbs. If Serbs are currently worth even 1/10th of what their ancestors before 1945 were, then if these plans to destroy Republika Srpska are executed, there will be a 2nd Bosnian War!
Japan, for instance is admired for its style, its dynamic creativity, and its cult of craftsmanship and perfection. These are all inherently appealing qualities.
When Japan was rising, management practices like kaizen were studied in US business schools, as were in-depth case studies of companies like Toyota. In contrast, there seem to be a relative paucity of studies on Chinese firms and management practices.
Damien Ma, who is one of the few ethnic Chinese in the US establishment who doesn’t seem to suffer from acute self-hatred, has written up a recent analysis on this question:
Damien compares the attention given to Toyota and finds no equivalence given to any Chinese firm:
It could be the fact that Toyota is a successful global company, thereby validating its system’s superior outcomes and making it easier to adopt elsewhere. But lean production’s genesis occurred much earlier than the globalization of Toyota, and it took the company decades to implement it well.
Perhaps it’s because Toyota was more “Western” and therefore the system it developed was more copacetic with the corporate culture that existed in America and Europe. But in its early days Toyota was considered “the most Japanese of the Japanese auto companies, being located in insular Nagoya…” and it operated much like a Chinese state-owned danwei with “…guarantee of lifetime employment and access to Toyota facilities (housing, recreation, and so forth).”
Finally, one may contend that China’s state capitalism is a competitive threat and Western companies therefore should protect, rather than internalize lessons, from Chinese companies. But Japanese companies, too, were viewed in the same way: “…Western companies didn’t seem to be able to learn from their Japanese competitors. Instead, they were focusing their energies on erecting trade barriers and other competitive impediments…”
None of this means that Chinese companies have nothing to offer or are bereft of novel management practices. A study of several dozen private Chinese companies concludes that speed, scale, and flexibility are their main advantages, because their operating assumption is to maximize growth rapidly in order to fend off what will inevitably be 20 market entrants within months.
But these strengths are essentially necessary survival tactics in an environment where the default setting is a scarcity of opportunities matched to an over-supply of entrepreneurs who chase after the same opportunities. For many private companies, there appears to be very little thinking on developing systematic models aimed at transforming industries. Even Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent, has quipped that “Ideas are not important in China–execution is.”
To perfect a system requires patience, and Toyota could afford that patience. That’s because the Japanese government protected the auto industry from foreign competition and the automaker didn’t have to face 50 domestic competitors. The very concept of kaizen requires diligent patience to improve the system, day by day. But if “continuous improvement” defines Japanese corporate culture, then “continuous change”—and the constant adaptations in response—may be an apt principle that applies to Chinese companies’ modus operandi.
It seems to be a general pattern of low Chinese cultural influence. Dmitry has been talking about this too, but in other areas like music, films etc. It’s a bit puzzling to me.
Maybe because day in its heyday, the Japanese have a reputation for making products of exceptional quality at an acceptable price (like Toyota technicals in third world countries or Corollas that can pretty much run forever or user-friendly super reliable and predictable daily driver exotic cars like the Acura NSX) that the Chinese do not have? Or maybe the perception that Japanese products have the finesse and sense of delicateness (like the reputation of Kobe steak) that recent Chinese products do not have?
Basically American cars in the 80s were more technologically advanced but somewhat tempermental (like digital dashboards, or the Corvette’s 4+3 transmission), but Japanese cars were a lot more reliable.
Now it’s time for a Serb imitation of Sher Singh posting:
In the war on the area of the former Yugoslavia, numerous crimes were committed. Many people were killed, but many criminals never faced justice. In this, without doubt, participated individuals of all nations. Still, some want to accuse Serbia and the whole Serb nation, for, what they say, was genocide and aggression against other nations and their violently formed states. This lynching, directed against us, lasts even to this day …
Oh Serb, wherever you may be now!
Whatever burden you carry in your heart and soul
History is returning again!
Rise Serb!
It’s the last hour!
They want to take it!
They want to destroy it!
They want it to disappear!
They want to choke it!
Don’t let them take it from us!
Our beloved land!
It’s as nice as a picture!
It’s our Serb Republic!
Even Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent, has quipped that “Ideas are not important in China–execution is.”
Interesting. I think this hints at the problem. Pragmatism is local solutions for local problems. You cant really export that. There is no “system”, just a bunch of specific responses, on the fly, to specific problems.
But if “continuous improvement” defines Japanese corporate culture, then “continuous change”—and the constant adaptations in response—may be an apt principle that applies to Chinese companies’ modus operandi.
Whats more, the Chinese system seems to not have a central organizing “spiritual principle”, so to speak. The Japanese system, continuous improvement, is an “ideal”, and thus inspiring. Its a spiritual value. I also think the Japanese system was an extension of the Japanese cult of fine craftsmanship, which is also an appealing ideal, and incorporated communitariam aspects of Japanese culture, which also held appeal.
By contrast, the Chinese system seems to be about surviving in an absolutely ruthless business environment. Its Darwinism at its finest. But with no system or vision, it’s just a bunch of immediate responses to local problems. If skillful, it may evoke admiration, but there is nothing to inspire.
China today is pragmatic and ruled by engineers. Engineers are important, but you don’t want that to be your whole approach to life.
What China lacks at the moment, for want of a better term, is “soul”. And that is because the Chinese lack freedom of mind or body, for now.
But perhaps the role of the CCP is to build up China for the time being. Before America acquired soft power, there was a period of concern with pragmatic issues only.
Post-CCP China will be a much more interesting place.
Maybe the perception that Japanese products have the finesse and sense of delicateness (like the reputation of Kobe steak) that recent Chinese products do not have?
Are these perceptions fair? I’d argue not necessarily.
WSJ had a good article earlier this year on the Chinese ascent to high quality Hi-Fi equipment.
The story contains clues to the puzzle. While China already produces most of the top-end audio equipment, the consumer-facing brands are all non-Chinese (European, Japanese, US). So consumers don’t connect these facts unless they are ultra-enthusiasts. The story made clear that it was possible to buy similar high-quality stuff without the expensive brand name for much cheaper. The problem is that it was quite hard to get your hands on this stuff if you were in the West up until recently.
This seems to be at the heart of the issue. Quality is no longer the binding constraint on Chinese firms. It’s now recognition that is the main challenge, as perceptions lag reality.
In areas like music, films, TV and literature, the story is harder to untangle in my view. Because it’s not clear that it follows the same pattern as in business; where quality is there already but percetions lag due to the aforementioned reasons.
There is a nuclear fusion energy project called ITER located in France which has achieved similar milestones earlier (though with significant delays/cost overruns).
EAST, the name of China’s project, is in close collaboration with ITER and has been in commission since 2006. They have had significant milestones in recent years. Unlike what Xinhua implies, EAST has reached nuclear fusion before. For 10 seconds. But that was with an older reactor, and it wasn’t at full strength.
The issue with nuclear fusion is that there has not yet been a single instance of net productive energy, i.e. with more energy output than input. This has not changed yet with EAST. But at least there are now two major competitive projects in the world rather than just one. The rise of China is proving to be a great boon for all sorts of scientific disciplines. Even if the promise of nuclear fusion never materialises, there are significant scientific wins to be gained from studying the plasma in the reactors.
We still need resources though, so we will probably send automated AI probes to gather the resources that we can grab from the solar system. We will continue surviving with a lower consumption level. We will decrease in numbers. Perhaps we will even go extinct.
I agree about the need to send robots first. As for extinction, it’s not the extinction as such that worries me but rather population dynamics when it comes to technology. Basically, it appears that any country that is technically advanced to have a space program will have low fertility rates and ageing population which will preclude it from having an ambitious one (US could do a lot more, same with Russia, Japan and Europe, Chinese are good but their numbers of old people are beginning to increase). India may be an exception to this, I don’t know yet. But general trend is concerning.
As for the rest, I remain in the optimist camp. Perhaps not on our lifetime, but within the next few centuries I think humans will colonize the Solar system. If old people vote down space exploration budgets in favor of Medicare etc. it will take longer, but we will get there eventually.
Chinks put themselves on the level of Negros when they respond to any criticism with foul language and claiming it’s “racist”. Then again, Chinks in the West mostly do copy Negro behaviours and “fashions”. Most of them act like higher IQ wannabe Negro plastic “gangstas”.
Soviet Russia was based on an “ideal” – and thus commanded blind admiration of the kind the US, based more on realistic acceptance of human failings like greed, could never do, however successful and dynamic it was.
That is a gross exaggeration. Admiration for the USSR was only ever a fringe phenomenon – unless you are basing your judgement on the opinions of your fellow tribesmen, among whom such admiration was indeed widespread. Also, large numbers of communists were willing to criticize the USSR by the 1970s, even if they still wished for it to prevail over the United States.
America offered the ideals of “liberty” and “making it” (“rags to riches”). Countless millions of worthless riffraff the world over have been inspired to reach American shores on the strength of these ideals. (In contrast, one visit to the USSR was usually sufficient to kill admiration for its vaunted ideals dead on the spot.)
And in general China is hugely popular with the “asshole brigade” on Unz, and with people on Unz in general.
My attitude is generally “fuck China,” but I do welcome its rise because I think it will be a game-changer for western libtards to see a global power which achieved its position all while running roughshod over any number of treasured progressive values.
I mean, the way it has swiftly brought the ban hammer down on its troublesome Whiggers, driven them before its eyes, and delighted in the lamentations of their women, that’s awe-inspiring. If you had asked me before I got wind of it if I though they could do it, I’d have said nah, they wouldn’t risk that, not with the eyes of the world looking on. But, bless ’em, they did it.
I think the two ways to command enthusiasm from high quality people is 1) Have a lofty “ideal” 2) Be very dynamic and creative. Soviet Russia had #1 and America had #2
There is also a third way. Have your diaspora own all the foreign media, fund the biggest think tanks, and buy off all the politicians, and presto: “soft” power. Israel has #3.
Timnit Gebru, one of the few black women in her field, had voiced exasperation over the company’s response to efforts to increase minority hiring.
In the email, reviewed by The New York Times, she expressed exasperation over Google’s response to efforts by her and other employees to increase minority hiring and draw attention to bias in artificial intelligence.
“Your life starts getting worse when you start advocating for underrepresented people. You start making the other leaders upset,” the email read. “There is no way more documents or more conversations will achieve anything.”
Look, we shouldn’t stoop to that kind of language here, even if we do prize free speech. The inclusive term for the diverse cultures that make up far east asia is: Chinx.
You know, Twitter may be SJW central, but fuck me if it hasn’t made foreign relations more entertaining than ever. Imagine we had this shit during WW2. (Underground livestreams of nazi gassings anyone?)
Do you really see Walmart and Amazon hiking prices and wages by 100% daily? This is what we would need for hyperinflation. It may happen but o doubt it.
Anyway, hyperinflation is not the end of the world. They are fast and generally economically beneficial .
Even in Zimbabwe, they had economic depression for years, hyperinflation ended that and put them on solid growth path that only ended in 2019.
Paris is to remove around half of its 140,000 car parking spaces under a scheme by mayor Anne Hidalgo to make the city more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly.
This could be dangerous. Without all of these cars, will peaceful protesters have to start burning people?
No falling out – although TF often makes good posts, he has a long record of gaslighting and strawmanning me (despite my own, up until now highly restrained behavior towards him, including my consistent dismissal of the popular conspiracy theory that he’s Indian).
I have progressively lost patience with it and started rejoindering more aggressively.
I realize you were seething and coping hard when Trump lost, no hard feelings from me towards you on that score.
BECAUSE China is not a vassal of the US and so it’s uncouth to teach anything about China’s progress in China. It’s moot anyways as China does not care one iota that the West adopts it’s policies.
You and AaronB still think it’s a high school popularity contest. The West is that hot chick that everyone grovels over while the Chinese is that nerd in the corner that everyone mocks. The Chinese do not care you think that way.
Do you really see Walmart and Amazon hiking prices and wages by 100% daily?
You nailed it.
What we are looking at in America (and probably the rest of the “developed” world as well) is the classic third world economy of a small number of very wealthy folks, a small middle class (most .gov bureaucracy and corporate middle manager types), and a very large lower class.
The political implications are obvious–chaos theory for the foreseeable future.
As for the rest, I remain in the optimist camp. Perhaps not on our lifetime, but within the next few centuries I think humans will colonize the Solar system
If the population decreases, while the overall level of technological efficiency increases, we will have no need for space colonization. We will probably send robotic space drones to mine the asteroids for rare resources that would have become depleted on Earth. There is a high probability that piloting these space drones would be done by IA with only minimal human intervention.
We could exist as a species during a million years using the resources of the Solar system. It’s more than enough a time frame for humans to figure out anything they are capable of understanding.
He literally speaks about “whitoids,” no ethnic Swede would use that word. Ive been quite a lot in Scandinavia, and I can assure you that the Thulean/Uttarakuru friend is not a Swede. In all likehood he is an Indian living in a Nordic country, which is not a problem itself. He also has strong affinity towards Hinduism and strong dislike of Islam, especially of the Islam in India.
But its quite hypocritical that the talks in derogatory way about whites and Christianity and uses name “Thulean friend.” Which implies that he has no confidence in his Indian identity so he masquerades as a Scandinavian. Maybe he thinks that he is then more trustworthy or prestigious, or something?
Thulean friend I often enjoy your posts, but really change your name or at least be honest of you being an Indian.
lol, I don’t hate AK’s guts. If I did, I’d obviously not read his takes, some of which are good and some of which are not good. He’d obviously prefer if I told him I always agreed with him, but that would be me lying to him and wouldn’t that be a bigger insult? When I praise, he knows it is genuine.
I also think he has very high standards for himself (a classic symptom of procrastination is not laziness as commonly assumed, but demands of perfection), so he tends to take criticism very personally and in my view overly emotionally.
Thanks for clarifying (I assume people are honest, until shown otherwise). You must admit that your knowledge of Indian issues and consistent pro-Hindu perspective (which includes particular disdain of Hindus’ enemies) makes the assumption that you are an Indian, if even by descent, to be a reasonable one.
I think the comparisons with Japan are possibly even unfair. While it may sound strange, wouldn’t America be the natural comparison?
Carl Zha (who was born in China, came to the US as a teenager and now lives in Indonesia while frequently visiting friends and relatives in China) says that the two countries share a lot more culturally in common than typically perceived.
You speak of pragmatism, and I think of the US ethos. If you read European elite opinions of the US from a hundred years ago, everyone was scoffing at the unsophisticated Yankee rubes. But Americans have always been pragmatic and humble tinkerers with little patience for Grand Theories. Edison is the quintessential example.
In some ways, Japan reminds me more of Germany. Like them, it is a fairly culturally isolationist country with a long traditions of excellence in precision engineering. Big countries tend to have different cultural norms for reasons of expediency. I don’t think there is an ur-Chinese cultural trait. Rather, just adapted cultural practices to evolving exigencies of being a really big fucking country, with all that such a matter entails.
Carl Zha (who was born in China, came to the US as a teenager and now lives in Indonesia while frequently visiting friends and relatives in China) says that the two countries share a lot more culturally in common than typically perceived
Tangential to this, one of the worst Chinese contributions to world history was China’s role in promoting the spread of Islam in SE Asia. Imagine how better the world would have been, had all of massive Indonesia been like Bali mixed with large Catholic enclaves?
Actually, I am beginning to think that the attraction of the Chinese system – illusory as it is – may serve a very useful role in inspiring reform in the West. Its well known that much of the social welfare reforms the West adopted in the early 20th century were out of fear of communist Russia.
Theres a big difference with the present situation with a China and with the past situation with the Soviet Communism. There was a real threat of violent revolution in thr Europe of the 20s and 30s, and even for a some time after WWII in the Italy and France, so the capitalist class truly feared for its survival, but now China is more of a competitor, so the pressure is very different from that of the past. After all there is no fear that if you slightly mistreat your workers that they will establish workers councils and rebel in the name of the Peoples Republic, Hah thats laughable.
But for that to work, China has to become attractive to high quality people, like Russia was, not just the Unzo-trash. Only then will it be seen as enough of an ideological threat to inspire reform.
High quality? In Europe major source of support for communism was literally a proletarian working class, okay there were some artists and few intellectuals, but vast majority of learned classes and bourgeoisie were against communism, the situation changed in the 60s, but thats an another story.
In USA communism was even more marginal, mainly supported by the downtrodden blacks, jews and poor migrants from Europe. There was another much more respectable and peaceful manifestation of socialism in Europe, the Social Democracy, it truly enjoyed large support among both intellectuals and workers of Europe. So you are really overgeneralizing the Jewish experience and claiming that they were “high quality people” in comparison to others.
Okay svensk pojke, when you were teenager what snus did you use and why people of Skåne sound so funny? The clock is ticking, show me that you are descendant of karoliner! Oh one more, how your Systembolaget works, how strong alcohol can you buy there when you are 18.
A practice redolent of maleficent macacas, I note.
His attention to and awareness of events Indian is something I used to find strange, but simply put it down to his quirky, pseudo-faggoty personality – certainly no normally functioning person would show any interest that giant toilet bowl.
I’m afraid the circumstantial evidence is mounting steadily, so you may wish to reconsider your dismissals of these “conspiracy” theories for the sake of your own reputation, which, I hasten to remind you, took something of a hit with the lack of commiseration you evinced in the wake of the stolen election.
Despite what you might think, I didn’t take that personally. Others may have, but not I. I simply said to myself, AK, he is just one of those people who loves “being right.” He predicted a Biden win and now he has to play the part of victor – no point being right if you’re deprived of the spoils of victory.
I wasn’t coping hard btw. I was massively bummed though. I had gone to bed thinking Trump won and the next day I’d just prepared some cheesecake and a coffee and had sat down at the computer and told myself I’m just briefly going to log into Twitter for a quick hit of elation, when what do I see, Biden is now gaining/leading in Georgia (or wherever the fuck)??? WHAT?!?!? What a kick in the guts. Not only was I seething, I felt like a damn fool because the previous day I had been poking fun at libtards for coping – ouch.
Ugh too bipolar, first you were a starry eyed optimist, then you became a simian pessimist.
The majority of kids around me in the Soviet 80ies were quite optimistic about the future. It only really changed in the early 90ies which was my coming of age period.
I can’t say that I am a pessimist today, more of a well informed realist.
Speculating about future and fabricating hypothetical models is its own fetter. Its a cliche to state that no one knows what future holds, but its a good cliche, still there is one thing that I surely know about the future, and its that there will always be surprises.
Can’t disagree with that. Life is uncertain in both its good and bad aspects.
It is only logical that you have to reach a fairly high level of development before you can hope to make much of a contribution in pushing the state of the art. When Japan began to make an impact, it was relatively farther along than China is today.
Remember, the per capita GDP of China is still only about as much as Bulgaria – it is only because of its huge size that China already is such a massive factor in the world economy. In any comparison between Japan and China you should never forget the 11 times difference in population!
We could exist as a species during a million years using the resources of the Solar system. It’s more than enough a time frame for humans to figure out anything they are capable of understanding.
Why only a million years? Why not until the sun burns out? (Not necessarily on Earth the whole time, but somewhere within our solar system.) That would be ample time to fabricate and bioengineer a series of ‘stepping-stone’ artificial planets, replete with real gravity, in all directions towards neighboring star systems.
Excuse me what? The Islamization of Malays is much more complicated topic than that. The spread of cultural and religious influences were from west to east in the Indian ocean, so Indian Muslim merchants are much bigger reason than couple of Chinese pseudo-Muslims like Zheng He.
Come on, “I’m a Swede in Sweden” could be technically true if he has a Swedish citizenship. Remember the Afroscience guy? He was French who happened to be adopted from Haiti by a French couple.
Thulean Friend did not state what is his race. No lefty white Swede would comment at racialist site like the UR. He would die of vomiting. A rigthoid white Swede commenting here would not be trolling with the progressive crap. But a Hindu Dindu Swede even a progressive one might be attracted to this site because of his etno-racial, even if only residual, chauvinism. Thulean Friend’s progressivism that includes anti-racism is no different than Jewish progressivism of the 20ths century that was solely motivated by ethnic and chauvinist interests that were packed in many layers of dissimulation and self-deception. All anti-racisms are racists.
Yep, I do agree that China most resembles America. Thats why I always understood why people would dislike both China and America, but people who think China is a positive alternative to America strike me as fools.
I defend America against China, because I think China is a more intense version of America on the things I dislike; ruthless competition, money and business more important than beauty and leisure, obsession with technology, soulless, aggressive, bureaucratic. And because I think America is moving – slowly- away from these things, while China is moving towards them.
But I am a not a defender of American culture. I do think there is one key difference that makes America more appealing though; greater anarchy and less government control leading to creativity and a greater sense of personal freedom.
The Chinese word for America means beautiful country and I think China modeled itself on the US. Another similarity between the two is a self-conscious break with their inherited Old World traditions, and the adoption of some kind of philosophy based on enlightenment principles.
Yes, Americans were indeed famously pragmatic. I think the Cold War is what made America ideological. In a certain sense, though, America was always ideological because it was based on an explicit break with tradition and based on enlightened principles instead. But this element only came to the fore later.
Agree also about Germany and Japan. Both countries have a rigid, regimented side to them but also a very deep Romantic side. And they both have a word for a peculiarly significant emotion – a strange, mysterious yearning. Yugen in Japanese and – I think- sensucht? In German. Precision engineering is I think a cultural trait, too, and not simply a matter of IQ.
The Islamization of Malays is much more complicated topic than that. The spread of cultural and religious influences were from west to east in the Indian ocean
Yes, it was complicated, Chinese were not the main driver – but they did play a critical role. Without Chinese interference, I’m not sure Islam would have triumphed almost everywhere. Would Muslim traders alone have overcome the Hindus and Portuguese?
Indian Muslim merchants are much bigger reason than couple of Chinese pseudo-Muslims like Zheng He.
In the towns I visited there are stories of charismatic historical figures of Chinese Muslims linked to the Zheng He naval expedition. They, according to the oral traditions, had contributed to the creation of a Sino-Indonesian/Javanese Muslim culture and Islamization of the people in the area. Among these cities, the Sultanate of Demak (known Demak Bintoro) deserves special attention for its central role in toppling the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom Majapahit (c. 1478). The collapse of the Majapahit Empire marked the transition from Hindu-Buddha to Islam in Java’s social history.
Under the control of the Chinese Muslim regime, Demak was central in spreading Islamic supremacy over Banten, Cirebon, Jepara, Lasem, Tuban, Gresik and Surabaya, all of which became small Islamic sultanates. The founder of Demak, Raden Patah himself was identified as a Chinese Muslim (some have argued that he was a Cina totok while the other regarded him a peranakan). See the discussion of his origins in Qurtuby (2003, 2009). During the struggle against the Portuguese, the regime in Demak had collaborated with Chinese communities that had existed for centuries before and were renowned for their ability in shipbuilding and forging weapons.
BTW a lot of people are unaware of the fact that the Oort Cloud of the Solar System probably extends all the way out to the near vicinity of Oort Clouds of the nearest neighbouring stars. There is probably not much empty space between adjacent Solar systems.
OTOH, what’s the point of survival as a biological entities if humans would have already understood all they coulf ever fathom in the physical reality?
Perhaps, by then human beings would start alter the fabric of the space-time itself. And all of this can be done without leaving our planet.
But as I wrote before, I doubt that we have as a species what is needed to get there.
Maybe some other time we will argue about this, its just, at least to me, its just as clear historically that Islam came to Indonesia from the west to east, as the Christianity came from the east to the west. Local merchant communities of Indian Ocean were totally controller by the Muslims, Aceh and Malay peninsula got Islamized first and they were the strategic nexus for the spreading of Islam and the epicentre of trade between India and China. Im not going to argue more about something that is so clear and elementary.
Zheng He by the way was polytheist in reality, he worshipped Mazu and chanted Buddhist mantras, so his Islam was quite different from Hadramauti, Yemeni and Gujarati Muslim merchants. So tiresome….
Currently, the globohomo forces are trying to conquer Poland
So you’re pretending to be with globohomo on the Belorussian front but against globohomo on the home and Hungarian fronts? Either one or more of these fights is fake, or the situation is strategically unsustainable.
Swedes, who gleefully collaborated with Hitler, invaded Poland in the 1650s
Throw in a battalion of zombies with halberds and an UFO or two, and you could make a fine B movie out of this. Wouldn’t beat African Kung Fu Nazis though:
Local merchant communities of Indian Ocean were totally controller by the Muslims, Aceh and Malay peninsula got Islamized first and they were the strategic nexus for the spreading of Islam and the epicentre of trade between India and China
Not all, total control came later with the aid of China. The point is that the Chinese intervention was enough to alter the balance of power in favor of the Muslims. No Demak, and Java likely remains Hindu/Buddhist like Bali. No alliance with China, and the Muslims might not have been able to withstand the Portuguese (who were allied with the Hindus).
Zheng He by the way was polytheist in reality, he worshipped Mazu and chanted Buddhist mantras, so his Islam was quite different from Hadramauti, Yemeni and Gujarati Muslim merchants.
Which doesn’t change the fact that Chinese contribution was critical to Islam’s triumph in Indonesia.
banks will actually have to lend deposits rather than create money
No, you got this wrong. It is precisely by lending deposits that banks create money ex nihilo.
Deposits are bank promises that our balances in their checking accounts are at our disposal any time we want to withdraw them. But in reality they only hold (by laws enforced by central banks) 2-4% of our deposits so if a good number of people try to withdraw their money, banks need to close down and ask to be bailed out, as Greeks and Cypriots found out some years ago. Most of our money is actually gone in the form of commercial loans.
This is the fiat money system that our economy operates on but, ironically, you seem to share the widespread and likely correct view that this reserve-fraction system is behind the business cycle.
You have some very strange ideas. In spite of being aware of the above, you want to have a system even more based on fiat money and you want to make banks operate in a full reserve fashion but have central banks take up their role in injecting even more massive amounts of liquidity in the economy. I don’t know how you expect that not to create the very same economic bubbles that commercial and central banks in tandem have been creating up to now.
I just have a university degree in economics, which means that I realize that I don’t really know much about the economy and I don’t have the same certitudes that you have. But it might be interesting if you provided some link to the sources of your ideas. Hopefully something academic and not some blog.
PS- The liquidity trap was discovered generations ago. After a recession and/or in the presence of very high levels of private debt, making interest rates arbitrarily small does not make people spend more. Nothing new under the sun there at all.
There is probably not much empty space between adjacent Solar systems.
If you wait long enough, stars actually pass through the Oort cloud.
For example, Gliese 710 is expected to come within about 0.18 light years of the sun. (or about 1/20 of the distance of Proxima Centauri) But that is in about 1.28 million years.
The last star to pass closer than Proxima Centauri was only about 15,000 years ago. Van Maanen’s Star. It passed within 3.1 light years of the sun.
If the population decreases, while the overall level of technological efficiency increases, we will have no need for space colonization.
Oh we will. The Puritans did not leave the Netherlands for New World because they ran out of space or food or whatever.
They were hiding out in the Netherlands because they didn’t like being bossed around by the English authorities and then they got pissed off by the Dutch government as well.
Human civilization on planet Earth is going to converge at some point, our friendly Thulean Friends protestations notwithstanding. There will be a McDonalds in Antarctica and Amazonian tribals will be forced to identify correct gender pronouns. Africans will drive Chinese EV cars powered by Rosatom Corporation. It will all kinda blend together.
Just like Puritans, a lot of people will be pissed by this new world order. Multipolarity will not help because if other blocks want to survive they also will have adopt “best practice” management at some point. There will be some differences between Chinese and Russian bosses, but in the long run they will be minor.
At some point, the option of becoming a squid on Europa will become more attractive than dealing with Medicare Billing Assistants all your life. People will leave.
Yeah, I don’t know if Gliese 710 has any planets but it will be worthwhile sending a generation ship to it if it does. Humanity can become interstellar species on the cheap.
Lets assume the average eur/rub exchange rate of 50, that comes to 1.4 trillion euros.
107/40 M poles = 2675
1400/145 M russians = 9655
This demonstrates that Russia received more that 3 times the windfall poland did but has been and keeps falling behind. The reason is simple: Vlad Putin’s greed and incompetence.
Keep in mind the above calculation is heavily conservative e.g. doesnt take into account the consolidated budget oil and gas revenue, the metal and fertiliser windfall, the fact that real (ppp) ruble exchange rate is much lower than nominal one. In reality the difference is not 3.5 but 5-7 times in favour of russia and yet… All this staggering amount of cash has been plundered.
And indeed this sad sad statistic is pushing all the Karlin’s buttons, making him have to come up with desperate made up reasons why poland is ahead. B-but muh eurogibs, cmon man, enough with this malarkey
There will be some differences between Chinese and Russian bosses, but in the long run they will be minor.
What makes you so sure the Chinese will select the Russians as the “chosen ones” to rule the great mass of humanity along side them?
I notice that seems to be the main hope of a lot of Russian nationalists, that China will make them relevant out of some sort of perceived ideological kinship. The idea that the Chinese will see the Russians as different to the other “white devils”.
I guess it’s not surprising though, when you’ve got a powerful, technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion on your border, I suppose that’s probably the best outcome you can hope for.
I thought about it. This is actually a valid reason: social and civilizational exit.
Just like Old Believers moving further into the Russian wilderness to run from the diktat of Nikonian Church and Tsardom.
But to get into space you need a lot of technology, so it will be difficult for the dissident communities to master it without the help of TNCs and state/government actors.
BTW that’s how the Schizmatrix lore supposedly starts: after the disastrous ecological effects of certain technologies become apparent, Earthlings decide to stop technological progress. Those who wish to pursue the development of disruptive technology are kindly asked to evacuate the premises.
This might happen: extreme environmental control, ecological totalitarianism are possible.
It appears the banal truth – I’m a Swede in Sweden – is unconvincing to everyone. I find this both bizarre and mildly amusing.
It’s a weird part of Unz Review culture. If someone disagrees with you it’s not possible that it’s a genuine disagreement in good faith. If they disagree it must be because of some personal bias. If someone suggests that the Holocaust actually happened, that person must be a Jew. If someone suggests that Muslims are not totally evil, that person must be a Muslim. If someone suggests that capitalism has some major problems, that person must be a communist.
I got accused of being both Chinese and a communist for suggesting that China is probably not intending to invade Australia.
I think it’s probably the kind of culture you’ll always get when you have a tiny group of people who hold fairly extreme beliefs and just can’t deal with the fact that most people think their beliefs are crazy.
There is a kind of right-wing Orientalism when it comes to perceptions of Japan by hard right and white nationalist types.
Contemporary Japan is regarded as castrated and housebroken, so it’s no longer seen as the Yellow Peril as it was as recently as the 80s and had been before then. That role is now played by China.
Right wingers in the contemporary liberal, multicultural West engage in a kind of right wing Orientalism whereby homogeneous Japan serves as a right wing model or foil to the contemporary West. They typically know very little about Japan, nor about how rightists and white nationalists before them tended to view Japan just a few decades ago. They’re just familiar with a few vague tropes and the fact that Imperial Japan was allied with Nazi Germany during WWII, and construct a right wing Orientalist view of Japan.
Might be worth going to, even if it doesn’t have planets. Just to use as a way station.
That is, assuming there are asteroids close enough to the star, to make it possible to use solar energy to process the mass.
And assuming we are still around then, and can do it. Thousands of years of observations might allow us to create maps, which would allow us to chart a course from Gliese 710 to a star with an earth-like planet.
If you didn’t want to be mocked, you should stop writing weirdly circuitous screeds that are so easy to mock. The entire effort to pretend at a No True Scotsman Defense isn’t much better. I don’t really give much emotion to your rambles(which have only faint, accidental brushes with reality), believe it or not, but the generalized stupidity and the openings you present tend to ask for the typical five-ten second rebuttal.
I don’t think commodities will collapse because of a trade dispute with China.
I think commodities will collapse in general largely because the world has been building like crazy for the past 20 years.
Also, China is sourcing iron ore from Guinea which is a higher grade than what you can get in Australia. That source might be 5 years away, but Australia should be maximizing its exports now so that 5 years from now it won’t be left in the dark.
Australia did massive damage to its environment by clear cutting trees to make room for farms and livestock.
That is one of the reasons Australia faces such severe drought and fires.
When Japan was rising, management practices like kaizen were studied in US business schools, as were in-depth case studies of companies like Toyota. In contrast, there seem to be a relative paucity of studies on Chinese firms and management practices.
Well, part of this is absolutely true; while Japan initially took total quality management(really what would become the most signature part of Japanese manufacture) from Americans like Demings, they implemented it in a serious and substantial way that they very much owned it. This is, incidentally, an excellent rebuttal of claims of people like AaronB on the unimportance of manufacturing – like many things, you can only learn to really improve on a process once you are actually implementing it(thus supporting the Fredrich Listian school of thought that knowledge is a capital good gained from implementation). The theory of TQM may have come from the US, but only in actually implementing it, could the Japanese discover how to practically use it to both quality and cost advantage.
By and large, China just doesn’t seem to have as good of a management practice in its manufacturing, so its unfortunately more akin to the fact that there’s a lot of chaos rather than actually good technocratic management. While China does have high quality products and is getting better at it, the general mentality of quality management and process improvement is still quite weak, and very few product managers seem to perceive that it is actually a means of cost savings.
AaronB if only you knew how much of a clone you are of every other China hater out there.
We get it. You vastly prefer the China of yore that worked in sweatshops and wasn’t threatening the west position of power.
You should have been in China 20 years ago. China today has progressed beyond that stage and they are not going back because some white expat is bitter.
No, you got this wrong. It is precisely by lending deposits that banks create money ex nihilo.
Banks lend first, proceeds from their loans create deposits in the banking system. Though I think we are trying to say the same thing. 🙂
But in reality they only hold (by laws enforced by central banks) 2-4% of our deposits so if a good number of people try to withdraw their money
I think reserve requirement is 0% now (corona chan made it happen) but it doesnt matter because modern banking (after 2008) switched to excess reserve regime (Fed simply floods the banks with $trillions whenever they feel like it and pays them interest so they don’t use them) so deposits and savings are not important anymore. Which is why banks offer glorious 0.1% yield on savings accounts – they don’t care, they don’t need your deposits anymore. Savings are for losers who don’t get it.
The only ratio that matters for the banks is capital ratio. They need 5% (I think it’s in Basel 3 regulations) of equity and retained earnings against their assets (loans that they make). And that’s how banks (including Cypriot) can go bad. Lending creates money, debt repayment destroys money, but debt defaults hit the banks where it hurts – earnings and thus capital ratio. And because each $dollar of earnings back up to $20 of assets, it can get ugly real fast.
I don’t know how you expect that not to create the very same economic bubbles that commercial and central banks in tandem have been creating up to now.
Well bubbles happen when asset price growth far outpaces income growth. By pumping money to the bottom, you guarantee income growth, your assets then must deliver magical results to create a bubble. Dow 400,000 in 5 years or something. But even if it does happen, and bubble then deflates, income guarantee will prevent it falling too far down because corporations will still be profitable. The poors will spend their income guarantee to satisfy their “unlimited wants” :). This will support corporate enterprise values.
I just have a university degree in economics, which means that I realize that I don’t really know much about the economy and I don’t have the same certitudes that you have. But it might be interesting if you provided some link to the sources of your ideas. Hopefully something academic and not some blog.
Well I’m not an economist, just a chemical engineer, so I view money from the perspective of flows. I derive my ideas from observation of reality and occasional reading on rules and regulations. My views are mostly actually fairly right wing libertarian economically – I oppose minimum wage, excessive regulations on business, I like corporations (corporation is probably the most significant social innovation in human history ), and I think excess taxes on the rich are silly (look up Hausers law to see why).
But from simple flow view point, money needs to move (they even call it “liquidity”) or it’s useless. We are not going back to gold standard, so money will always be fiat. Because of that, we know that we will always create money out of nothing, in unlimited quantity (just over a long time period).
It then becomes very simple – which group of humans is best positioned to make that free infinite money move? Right now, it’s the poors. The banks and the rich are not helpful. So we need to pump money into the poor instead of the rich and banks to drive sales, corporate profits, and GDP higher. Simple.
PS- The liquidity trap was discovered generations ago. After a recession and/or in the presence of very high levels of private debt, making interest rates arbitrarily small does not make people spend more. Nothing new under the sun there at all.
Liquidity trap is masturbatory garbage invented by the banks and the rich to excuse them not doing their job. The rich don’t spend because they are comfortable, not because they have preference for cash. If they had preference for cash, they wouldn’t be buying junk bonds at negative interest rates. The rich know they can always print more cash for themselves (Fed bailouts etc). But that’s fine, it’s their business. The poors don’t spend because they have no income, not because they have preference for cash. Now this is something we can and should address. Hence basic income guarantee.
All this staggering amount of cash has been plundered.
Russia has 4 times forex reserves and 2-3 times less debt compared to Poland. Poland runs budget deficit (helps GDP growth), Russia runs budget surplus (hurts GDP growth). Polish interest rate (before corona chan) was 1.5%, Russian more like 6-7%.
Fiscal and monetary policy preferences can explain the difference in GDP growth rates between two countries. No need to invoke fantastical “plunder”.
Someone I know quite well and trust, told me that when he worked in Sahara as a geologist, he often saw Nabta Playa type stone circles and Bet Il type menhirs. Often both types of stone structures were erected near tumuli. Ancient Berber usually reproduced the form of a tumulus for their royal tombs.
I was talking about multipolarity, China will be its own power center, and Russia will be its own. Smaller than China of course, but large enough that Chinese won’t be able to afford the luxury of pissing off the Russians.
I am not a nationalist, but I’m bullish on Russia, and I think it will become “Canada with teeth” in the decades ahead. Its the “teeth” part that makes Russia a major world power.
Altan, the gov already agreed to demands and 25 crore is not a lot in Desh of 140. The 4-5 states who shutdown in SE is more than enough
“Sher Singh posting”? I’m not on 15 lvl cope that whiteoid Desh with pop of my left nut matters..
The entire Balkans & Baltics together has less people than NY, who gives a fk??
Beyond providing strangely retarded white pussy..
Wtf has their post-christian history been?
Singhs marched on Delhi, gov backed down..
Whiteoids cope how 1% Singh control 10-15% (double cuz of FPTP) seats in CA/UK
Singhs carry Sabres in countries with butter knife license
Trump lost, Indian is going to be 3rd largest minority after Black/Mexi soon..
Pak elite is turning Sikh LOL
I’m not some retarded revanchist, reality on ground is we sh#t on street, u lie with your face in it….
Fk China, yellow man will defend it, but it Islamized SE (Asia)
Thulean Friend is hereby kicked out of being Indian
Because Japan is the only non-white country that reached a higher level of cultural development in the modern epoch (in the 20th century). So there is an unusual perspective for European observers, of perceiving a non-white country which doesn’t have a low modern cultural level.
We perceive that Japan is almost as advanced as a West European country, has a connoisseur culture, and portrays self-confidence about its uniqueness and idiosyncrasies.
Self confidence about cultural eccentricity, is probably correlating to being an island, and it’s similar to Great Britain in this aspect. Japan and England are the two countries where eccentricity is idealized, and these are possibly the two cultures which are romanticized most easily by the rest of the world.
In addition, Japan has aspects of connoisseur culture, which is similar to Italy (in visual culture and cuisine), and aspects of high quality engineering and manufacturing culture which resemble modern German culture (for example, in pianos, optics) .
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Our perceptions also transfer in a fetishistic way onto objects, and object fetishism is one of the easiest ways to see how people feel about countries. If you open your fridge and see it is full of a row of Asahi Super Dry bottles, somehow your fridge looks more attractive, than if you had bottles of Heineken.
I have an unopened bottle of Suntory whisky and my tendency is to leave the bottle unopened in kitchen as a visual decoration. On the other hand, I receive often bottles of Polish liquid like cherry vodka, and my unconscious tendency is to hide the Polish alcohol on the bottom of the cupboard. Here you can see where you brain is cargo culting about inanimate objects, based on whether you received positive or negative national stereotypes.
view Japan just a few decades ago
And these 1950s views, seem strange and dated when we see them now. It reminds me of reading a 1920s novel by Scott Fitzgerald, where a character in the novel is talking about they should hire a poor Swedish servant girl. (I was thinking “poor Swedish servant”? This concept of poor Swedish servants, sounds strange for modern ears, although not in 1920s USA).
In terms of Hollywood films, the last negative films about Japanese I’ve seen are “Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961).
“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is ironic, because a film is beloved with Japanese women, who try to copy the clothing of Audrey Hepburn. Her character suffers under a rude Japanese peasant housemaster. But this peasant Japanese housemaster, doesn’t match to our modern stereotypes . Since 1980s perhaps, our stereotype that Japanese people are polite, wear clean suits, and will not be seen without a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes.
“Bridge on the River Kwai” is almost a propaganda idealization of an English gentleman pretending to be criticism of him, and contrasts to this primitive Japanese peasant soldiers (who are claiming to be samurai). It’s like watching English gentleman stereotypes trying to defeat Japanese samurai stereotypes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdycEK_38Y.
Lol arguing again about whether Thulean Friend is Indian?
It doesn’t seem like complicated internet epistemology. Fact he is talking about English language sources about India, indicates he is perhaps/probably not Indian. If he was Indian, he wouldn’t be able to avoid reading half his time in Hindi, and therefore would be more giving us more localized information, based on his exposure native Indian sources.
His internet feed would be at least half in Indian languages. It’s impossible to escape your native language on the internet, even when you are trying to learn other languages. It’s far more comfortable and effortless to read the internet in your native language, even if you have a very high level in other languages.
Whereas instead he recommends to read English language sources about India. Previously his name was “Polish Perspective” and he was recommending always to read English sources about India. For example, https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-39/#comment-2282248
It seems that people here find his (ecological nationalist) views on other topics to be controversial. Therefore to avoid the uncomfortable sensation of writing alongside someone they disagree with, then they claim that he is Indian.
Of course, it’s quite a childish reaction, because the value of our time on internet forums is to talk to people you disagree with, and who have unusual views.
If we don’t find people with different views, this forum would be rapidly very boring and a waste of time, even from the entertainment perspective.
Aside from the value of eccentricity, Thulean also has adds a lot of sources and some references to books he reads – he’s one of name when I’m scrolling through the forum, I often don’t skip from reading.
Moreover, if Thulean Friend was Indian, then that would be a good thing from the point of view of making his posts about India more informative (while the sad reality he recommends English sources, shows he likely is Swedish/Polish, and not such an “expert” about India).
The theory of TQM may have come from the US, but only in actually implementing it, could the Japanese discover how to practically use it to both quality and cost advantage.
I have worked in a wonderful TQM environment in my younger days–an amazing experience that would be a great benefit to everyone.
The Japanese had a huge advantage because they did not have to try to implement it in a “diverse” US environment.
The “dead wood” gets super-obvious very quickly when that type of teamwork is required.
In the US it becomes necessary to quietly create sub-groups (with no “diversity”) to deal with the very tough tasks.
Our team accomplished true miracles in its day–it finally died because the leaders moved on to other pursuits and were replaced by idiots. We worked around the clowns as best we could, but eventually they insisted on being in the room–and we were doomed.
The amount of money the EU is moving around is not that much. While 12b for Poland and 5b for Hungary and 3b for Greece is better than nothing 17b for Germany and its economy is not really much. Germany collects 16b in excise tax from petrol sales and 3.5b from alcohol sales.
The sum of nets for donor states is about 50b. So basically only 50b of wealth is redistributed. In 2017 EU budget was 158b out of which supposedly only 6% went to administration.
Overall the EU as a project seems to be really cheap. Its chief product is not the money it redistributes but thousands and thousands of laws and administrative procedures it creates every year that are translated into all EU languages and ratified by parliaments of all countries and implement by administrations of all countries.
Probably China will start to seem more attractive to us, if/when it becomes an economically developed country. Political system has a role in its current lack of attraction, but the economics is likely more significant.
I will be labelled as a “barbaric materialist” to say this – but economic development level is one of the preconditions in the 21st century for successful “soft power”. As a case study for comparison, we might look at South Korea, which became a developed country, and subsequently their popular culture became more appealing to middle class youth around the world in the last decade.
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In this forum, people often don’t understand a distinction between GDP and GDP per capita. GDP refers to the size of an economy, while GDP per capita is result of dividing GDP by population. It’s the latter measurement which can roughly indicate economic development in a country.
China has a large GDP (due to large population), but the GDP per capita is still low (in the sense of being the same as lower-middle income level countries – e.g. Mexico).*
As China becomes more developed economically, then we will start to see more externally aspects of bourgeois culture. This is what Karlin has used the term to describe the extreme embourgeoisement in central Moscow – “Stuff White People Like”.
Modernization and industrialization at the lower level of economic development, provides more dystopian aspects, than in wealthy countries.
Reason the dystopian prefabricated housing in the Soviet Union of Khrushchev’s epoch onwards is less aesthetically attractive than the equivalent epoch buildings in Switzerland, is not because of lack of taste – but because of what could be afforded in terms of architecture for mass housing in the middle income Soviet Union, compared to high income Switzerland.
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China only recently climbed past Mexico in this measure. Except in some urban centres, you would not expect yet a lot of the embourgeoisement that would be attractive to European hipsters (“Stuff White People Like”, as Karlin describes this).
When/if China reaches to the Portugal level, then we might expect change in the demographic that their cultural production will be attractive to (even assuming no political changes). There has been already such a situation with South Korea’s culture.
Hayabusa2’s bounty is expected to exceed 100 mg (0.0035 ounces), and its samples come from a very different kind of asteroid — a primitive “C-type” space rock rich in water and carbon-containing organic compounds.
You have an outmoded Marxist view about the communication here. It does not occur between rational corporeal entities. First there is no communication. Second the exchanges are parts of a sequence of concatenated texts. Each text has an emergent lyrical subject. The lyrical subjects are in search of intimacy. Since fucking somebody is not possible in the realm of textual existence fucking with somebody becomes the highest attainable form of intimacy. Text entities that delay the emergence of the lyrical subject are Turing test flunkees whether of AI or HI kind.
Mr. Doom, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed came to my mind. It is about you and your fantasy. A farewell by the western intelligentsia to the dream of just and equal world. It was 45 years ago.
Witness urban sprawl left unchecked by the civility of roads and parking. Filth and peasantry climbing on top of each other, walling themselves off from light and air like cockroaches. I’m sure the pinnacle of beauty by your judgement, no doubt the tinge of slime green and shit brown are signs of vigorous health.
If they abolish public transportation there would be more space for cars to park in cities. The bus depots that house buses and trams. The underground subway tunnels DIRECTLY under cities. All wasted square footage that would easily park millions of cars. Overnight you’d have long stretches of cheap, accessible parking in the heart of the city. Yet I am forced to illegally park in the handicap spot because assholes like you won’t assimilate with technology and grow up.
You just suffer from European roads, which are retardedly tiny and make driving seem like an overt homosexual act. Europeans seem to be averse to laying long stretches of straight (heh) normal-human roads to let you rip it and enjoy the drive. It’s all gay roundabouts and speed bumps and school zone nonsense. If you drove on normal roads you’d see that cars in cities is as natural as peanut butter and jelly. I too would be frustrated having to deal with cyclists pretending to be cars, clueless blind pedestrians too ignorant of their own mortality or parallel park like I live in Japan and sleep in a closet. But it’s not all that bad in the real world (drive-thru, underground parking, inner-city highways, roads wider than a horse carriage, apps to find parking/speed traps/construction/accidents/road blockage).
Does not sound plausible based on my experience. I had four Chinese post-docs and one Chinese graduate student. Four out of these five were in the upper quartile of the people I had in the lab. All worked hard and behaved like normal people. One former post-doc is already an Assistant Professor in another University (in the US, as a rule, every step of your career is in a different place; in contrast to Europe, permanent positions in the US are exclusively at cemeteries), and two more have PI potential.
I also think you over-generalize about Negroes. My best tech was a black girl from Cameroon. In fact, I interviewed a black American guy for this position right before her. He certainly did not measure up. After her interview the choice was easy. The results showed that my choice was correct. She worked very hard (having two kids and a husband) and behaved absolutely normally. I hired her to manage our colony of genetically modified mice (genotype, set up necessary breeding pairs, separate litters, keep good records, alert me and others when desired genotypes are available, etc.), but within a month she came to me and said that it only takes about half of her time and she wants to do something in addition. After spending just a year and a half in my lab she earned authorship on three papers. Good thing is that not even the most deranged libtard could accuse me of racism. She was blacker than 95% of American blacks (she is a real African, not a hyphenated pretender). Our department had a black graduate student from Africa, and his PI was extremely happy with his performance and attitude. Your description of Negroes fits degenerate American blacks, not the normal ones. I believe that PC BS and freebies made them pathetic degenerates, not their race.
Does not accord with my experience of African graduate students who will often do hare-brained things like pour concentrated hydrochloric acid right above a lab stool, spilling some on it accidentally, not even notice that they spilled it, and left it for blank slatists to sit on.
How to organize a petition to deny the vaccine to Sweden until the time countries that tried to reduce mortality get it first? Norway and Finland have 10 times lower mortality than Sweden. If Sweden did what Finland and Norway did 6000 Swedes would be still alive. Bud Sweden did not do it because it does not care for lives of its citizens. Sweden should not get vaccine until countries that care for the lives of their citizens get it first.
India is quite behind economically but has quite meaningful soft power. So did Japan, even when it was just a backwater country, as it was famous even then for its swords. This also doesn’t distinguish why, for example, Poland creates quite a bit of media while Hungary doesn’t at the same level of GDP/capita.
There is probably a link between soft power production and GDP per capita, but it is doubtful that it is straightforward.
Interesting idea… Let’s give unlimited amounts of fiat money, created out thin air, to the poor and we will have a healthy economy… What could possibly go wrong? Why hasn’t anyone thought of it before? Perhaps Maduro could use that tactic to finally take Venezuelans out of their misery.
I don’t know what the economic situation is in Russia (if that’s where you live) but let me inform you that here in the US just before the pandemic we had a half of a century record low unemployment rate (so much for automation killing jobs and the need of a UBI) and in most of Europe the economy was also buoyant, especially in Germany, the UK and some Nordic and EE countries. As a matter of fact, right now the economy has recovered in many parts of the US, such as the one where I live, and we have practical full employment again. I see “help wanted” and “now hiring” signs in most factories, retail stores and even some restaurants. They’re struggling to find workers.
I don’t quite see the purpose of the desperate measures that you keep advocating thread after thread.
I see “help wanted” and “now hiring” signs in most factories, retail stores and even some restaurants.
Indeed, traveling to Michigan from TN in August, I was surprised to see numerous “help wanted” and “now hiring” signs on restaurants and other establishments. My conclusion was that lugenpresse stories and “stats” on unemployment are just as false as everything else American MSM spread.
Well, there are tons of books written about Sun Tzu and how it relates to the business world.
These Japanese books came out during and after the peak of Japan’s rise. So there was a lot of interest on learning what made Japan so successful.
With China, the west still can’t figure out if China is a communist country or capitalist. Most Americans think China is just a giant sweatshop and have no idea of 5G or Quantum computers.
Luckily, we need not be stymied by the refusal of many Harris/Biden voters to rationally consider the substantial evidence of outcome-changing vote fraud.
Republicans have the majority in the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, and the US Constitution gives state legislatures the sole authority to choose or determine how to choose presidential electors.
If they have balls, they will certify Trump electors to reflect him winning the majority of legally compliant, timely ballots.
(That excludes ballots that were not received by the close of the polls on election night. It also excludes ballots that were altered after they were received, whether by “poll workers” or by the voters with the selectively granted permission of those workers.)
Trump won and he should be sworn in for his second term on January 20th. He may yet be.
2. “Sher Singh posting”? I’m not on 15 lvl cope that whiteoid Desh with pop of my left nut matters..
The entire Balkans & Baltics together has less people than NY, who gives a fk??
New York State population 2019: 19.45 million
Balkans Population : 32 million
Who dares say, who dares lie, that Serbia is small ?
She’s not small, She’s not small, but was three times at war
In 1912, in 1912, she drove out the turks
In 1913, In 1913, she withstood the bulgars
In 1914, In 1914, the Jerries struck [“Schwaba” – slang collective term for all Germans]
In 1918, In 1918, the Serbs won
Who dares say, who dares lie, that Serbia is small ?
She’s not small, she’s not small, but is still at war
And will never, and will never, be enslaved again.
I took a slight bit of licence with the translation to better fit the attitude being expressed with “who dares say/lie” rather than the more straightforward “who is saying/lying”. Even back when I had some mild nationalist sympathies, this song made me cringe, reminding me of nothing so much as Freddy Corleone in Part II pathetically protesting that “I can handle things, I’m smart…not like everybody says I’m dumb, I’m SMART!” [I.E. We ain’t small, not like everybody says – we’re BIG. “We wuz knezes and sheeit.”]
The clock is ticking, show me that you are descendant of karoliner!
He’s had long enough to answer. His conspicuous refusal to do so is noted. The fact that he hasn’t posted anywhere else since the question was put to him doesn’t get him off the hook. Identity is taken very seriously on this site, and one has a responsibility to closely follow all threads in which one’s identity is in dispute.
, he wouldn’t be able to avoid reading half his time in Hindi
Hell, even I can’t avoid avoid reading Hindi on the internet these days, and I’m not even interested in anything Indian. Seems like half the youtube searches I run about topics that have zero relevance to India result in repellent Hindi script sprawled all over my screen.
It’s gotten so bad that even encountering Hindoo usernames in the comments ticks me off, and I’m unable to read what they say without their goofy singsong accents resonating in my skull. I propose that Indians be forthwith banned from all English-language internet media.
Of course, it’s quite a childish reaction, because the value of our time on internet forums is to talk to people you disagree with, and who have unusual views.
People like you and DforDoom just don’t get it. (utu, however, may be on to something.) This site is a training ground for ‘democratic centralism.’ Yes, we may debate this or that topic, but once a consensus has been reached, that settles it. If my party needs Thulean Fag to be Indian, then he is Indian, goddammit. That is how we win.
(Btw, DforDoom, did you enjoy the recent rendition of the national anthem in the Eora language by the Wallabies – even the white players – as much as I did? I’ve still got the warm buzz I felt. Nothing spells inclusivity like hearing your national anthem in a tongue you can’t understand and whose existence you weren’t even aware of until five minutes ago.
I suspect we’ll be seeing much more of this, since there are so many Abo languages left to repeat the spectacle with and since it’s now the unwritten law of the land that no major sporting event may commence without first boring spectators to tears with elaborate – but cynical, rather than heartfelt – paeans to indigenous Australia.)
And perhaps you should never get your freedom back because you ignorantly and sanctimoniously supported taking ours with no good medical reason. You are a fucking bully.
Trump lost, Indian is going to be 3rd largest minority after Black/Mexi soon..
Can’t argue with that. You open the floodgates to these macacas and every Ranjeet, Sanjeet and Goop-tah is gonna want in.
The Great Hinundation.
Now, listen, don’t go getting all bent out of shape about anything I’ve said here. You’re an okay dude. Just because I ‘hate’ you doesn’t mean I hate you, see.
And besides, if there’s one good thing I can unreservedly say about India is that it offers the most favorable prospects of delivering a mass spanking to the minions of Mahound liable to occur this century; that one such act being sufficient to absolve your breed of a thousand aesthetic sins.
Btw, DforDoom, did you enjoy the recent rendition of the national anthem in the Eora language by the Wallabies – even the white players – as much as I did?
The potential this offers for cost-free virtue-signalling is practically unlimited.
Any native speaker of English will notice that its not my native language, but you were clearly implying that I take Thulean Friends identity too seriously, which means that you didnt detect that I was half-joking with my question making.
His internet feed would be at least half in Indian languages. It’s impossible to escape your native language on the internet, even when you are trying to learn other languages. It’s far more comfortable and effortless to read the internet in your native language, even if you have a very high level in other languages.
Daniel, wtf bro? This barely coherent remark, which succeeded only in betraying a greater lack of reading comprehension than I initially estimated, somehow merited a LOL? Sheesh, that’s some slap in the face, coming from one of the sharper minds in these parts.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this Altan chap yet. I’ve only recently even bothered reading his posts, since when you see a username beginning with altan… there’s hardly much incentive to continue reading, combined with the fact that when he first came to my attention the war with hapless, friendless Armenians had just commenced, which further dampened my interest. Despite possible appearances to the contrary, it takes much more than a simple miscommunication to incur my ire.
Orthodoxy is too mystical, services last too long, you
have to stand or even prostrate yourself, etc
Its mysticism is one of its few strengths. (Its major strength being its role as an ethnic marker, although this isn’t strictly an ecclesiastical feature.) People want mystical. They can get their logical rules from the rest of their culture. Catholicism’s weakness is its pretense of having derived logically airtight rules for everything – which is fine if you control the cultural levers, but the moment it becomes possible to rationally scrutinize it, you’re quickly reduced to a laughing stock.
And you don’t have to stand the entire time. You can sit down when the priest goes behind the altar (whatever that room is called*), which he does quite a lot. The few Greek churches I’m familiar with have installed pews, and I’ve seen some people (not just the elderly) sit through an entire service.
*One of the graver weaknesses is surely that so many people are like me, exposed to church services from the very youngest, and yet as adults still fundamentally clueless about what is taking place – and believe it or not, there was a time when I even took it quite seriously. Also, very few people can understand what the hell is being chanted, besides the obvious phrases like “amen” and “God bless.” Then again, this used to occur regularly in the middle ages in catholic churches, where inadequately trained priests who couldn’t speak Latin would just make up words and the congregants were none the wiser.
Beyond not understanding the liturgy, people are even uncertain about such ritual basics as when to cross yourself during the service (and there is a lot of this). The priest himself performing the sign of the cross is an obvious cue, but otherwise it’s far from clear. I think after an “amen” is an appropriate time (I can’t remember, it’s been a while). Mostly though, people just follow-the-leader, who I think often just crosses himself because inspiration struck him, much the way baptists blurt out hallelujahs without apparent rhyme or reason.
I used to have fun seeing if I could “fake people out” by pretending to start crossing myself and getting onlookers to follow me, but then stop before I completed it (as in just reach my hand to my forehead and then abruptly stop) and see if they went on to complete it. This only worked during regular services, when the number of attendees was smaller. During Christmas and Easter it was too packed, and half the people were just there to socialize, so they’re weren’t paying enough attention to be able to catch them out with a faked cross.
The timing looks good for resilient low-power programmable AIoT terminals employing Nanobridge FPGAs and nonvolatile memory. AIoT – a combination of artificial intelligence and the internet of things – combines AI, 5G telecom and the processing of big data.
You definitely have a strange way of “having fun”. You’re probably one of those individuals who likes to attend funerals, even for individuals that you’ve never known, because there might be an opportunity to attend a free memorial lunch after the burial.
Szájer was always rumored to be a homosexual. He was actually rumored to have had some pedophile incident, though it was never very specific so I have no idea how true or even what it was. There was a rumor of getting uncovered in Vienna, another rumor about his native Sopron (on the Austrian border), both cities were mentioned in the context of pedophilia and homosexuality, I never knew if these were different versions of the same rumor or about different events. For what it’s worth, I first heard these rumors sometime around the year 2000, certainly before the election in 2002. It was also rumored that it was the reason he has never been a government minister, despite being smart and competent and always loyal to Orbán. “He could be blackmailed” – so the rumors.
Basically everyone knew about these rumors. Also, everyone suspected that at least the homosexuality part was true. Everyone, including Fidesz supporters. Including everyone with any connection to the Fidesz inner circle. Talking head journalists close to Fidesz discussed the issue on some rightist TV channel this week, and they said things like “we’ve all known about this issue with Jóska (diminutive of József, “Joe”) for 30 years…”
But I don’t think many other prominent Fidesz members are homosexuals. Last year there was another sex scandal about an orgy involving a Fidesz mayor and a few other guys close to him, but it also involved a few young female prostitutes, and, according to the video which leaked, the guys were strictly having sex with the girls. Orbán is clearly heterosexual, as are most prominent leaders, some of whom have already had divorces, but then always had a new relationship with a woman. One prominent Fidesz MEP, Tamás Deutsch, has the distinction of being a dumb Jew, but is also very loyal to Orbán, and has four children from two of his three wives, plus another child from an extramarital affair with his then secretary. The potential for scandal there is that he has long been rumored to be a cocaine addict, or at least heavy abuser. His photo taken on an election night (he was barely able to speak) has become a meme with “drugs are bad, mkay” texts, though he could have been merely drunk that day. I’m fairly sure he has used cocaine, I even know a guy who claimed to once have snorted with him.
Some other people in Orbán’s inner circle are probably cocaine abusers, most likely his close advisor Árpád Habony (a video from Ibiza seems to indicate that at least, also persistent rumors; the guy is usually thought to be the mastermind behind Orbán’s media empire), and I’ve heard of a few others which are less persistent and thus may or may not be true. Also several cases of lower level people getting caught over the years. (Their careers usually ended, so the likely rule is simply “don’t get caught.”)
A commercial court in Zurich has backed Swiss private bank Julius Baer in its treatment of Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian investor who was put under sanctions by the U.S. in 2018. The bank had decided to freeze assets of the Russian investor in order to comply with the sanctions regime. The court has now decided that the bank was in its right to do so, according to a report by «Tages-Anzeiger» on Friday (behind paywall).
Vekselberg had demanded access to a securities depository account at the bank in a bid to sell some assets. He wanted to use the money to close a loan worth $160 million. The assets at Julius Baer were denominated in U.S. dollars and therefore subject to the sanctions regime. Julius Baer might have violated the sanctions had it given in to the demand of Vekselberg, the court said, adding that the bank not only had a right to do so, but a duty.
A commercial court in Zurich has backed Swiss private bank Julius Baer in its treatment of Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian investor who was put under sanctions by the U.S. in 2018. The bank had decided to freeze assets of the Russian investor in order to comply with the sanctions regime. The court has now decided that the bank was in its right to do so, according to a report by «Tages-Anzeiger» on Friday (behind paywall).
Vekselberg had demanded access to a securities depository account at the bank in a bid to sell some assets. He wanted to use the money to close a loan worth $160 million. The assets at Julius Baer were denominated in U.S. dollars and therefore subject to the sanctions regime. Julius Baer might have violated the sanctions had it given in to the demand of Vekselberg, the court said, adding that the bank not only had a right to do so, but a duty.
Its wonderful that USA does its very best in stopping of capital outflow from Russia and constantly encourages Russian oligarchs to invest in their own country. American leadership is the best friend for those who support protectionist policies in Russia!
It seems that the common sense logic itself is collapsing or disappearing during this era.
That’s an optimistic way of seeing things. There’s a pessimistic way of seeing things; that is as long as Russia uses US $ it is not free or immune from direct American interference in its politics and economy (Nord Stream II comes to mind). And then there is the realistic way of seeing things: Russia is integrated into the global economy and must abide by certain rules that are not decided in Moscow. The news this year are that these rules are probably not decided in Washington either. Americans can’t even decide the election outcome for themselves, the US of A are just a tool. Question is; who makes the rules?
BLOCKQUOTE – Even back when I had some mild nationalist sympathies, this song made me cringe, reminding me of nothing so much as Freddy Corleone in Part II pathetically protesting that [I.E. We ain’t small, not like everybody says – we’re BIG. “We wuz knezes and sheeit.”] – BLOCKQUOTE (done manually because the default UR one is bugged for some reason)
I’ve heard this song a few times myself and felt differently.
After all, how can there be something cringeworthy in it simply reciting facts and expressing pride in them?
In fact, Serbia would indeed be much larger than it is right now if it was not being constantly sabotaged, artificially having fake nations privileged at its expense and relentlessly kept being beaten down by malevolent foreign empires for at least the past 700 years …
And yes, it is a fact that Serbia won in all those wars from 1912-1918 (although not without considerable struggle of course). Of course, forming the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1918 would end up undoing much of these victories in the decades to come, teaching the lesson that Serbs don’t have so much of a problem with winning battles and triumphing with raw military force, but one with political wisdom, diplomacy, national unity, and cohesion.
Although, of course, explaining this to someone that unironically believes in Yugoslav national identity, that Serbia was a stable and “normal” country from 2000-2012, and other notoriously infamous stupidities that you’ve already been debunked on many times by now …
Still, I’m curious, who exactly where your ancestors?
Russian oligarchs need to band together and sue US government for anti-semitism and discrimination.
All those Vekselbergs, Rotenbergs, Abramoviches… they will have a case – US Treasury is pursuing Jewish people and their money with vigor not seen since 1930’s Germany.
One of the geatest ironies of modern politics is that without sanctions Russias economy would be closely integrated with the west and USA and EU could have enormously economic soft power in Russia.
You think I went to church for the sole (or main) reason to do that? Lol. I was a kid, dragged there by my father. Another good point that anon had about the Orthodox church is that the services definitely last too long. What’s a bored but curious kid supposed to do if not pay attention to what’s going on and try to figure out an explanation of how things work there and perhaps have a bit of fun at the same time, especially when the priest, who was a family friend and would visit our home almost weekly, never even tried to explain anything to me?
There was a time there when I was quite devout (around 11-12yo), and some people casually floated the idea of the priesthood for me (lol as if – I was very dutiful about keeping up appearances for the sake of my parents, which gave family friends the completely wrong impression of me), so it’s quite remarkable he never attempted to impart any religious instruction to me. That’s something Catholics do – that everyone does – vastly better than us.
Now, as for attending the funerals of complete strangers in order to score a free meal, I had no idea that was even a thing. Though now that you mention it, I vaguely recall seeing a documentary about it; or it may even have been the plot of a movie, not sure. It’s actually a pretty cool idea, definitely worth doing for the sheer thrill value (and may as well have the meal if it’s there – it’d be rude not to). I have an ex-girlfriend who’d be perfect as an accomplice. She would back me up seamlessly if I was bullshitting someone, and even make some unique contributions of her own. I reckon I could rekindle that old flame on the strength of this idea alone. Thanks!
No matter what anybody thinks, to me Romania is part of the Balkans, and btw why Greece is not? Biggest contributor to the Balkans culture has been historically Greece and its geographically part of the peninsula, so its a Balkan country.
If you don’t like Venezuela, we can take any other random country. Morocco, Turkey, Montenegro,… Their governments should stop wasting time and send helicopters to poor neighborhoods every morning to drop bags of freshly printed cash.
As a matter of fact, let’s imagine Russia. Mr Mishustin should issue a 50 million ruble check (I know that you said unlimited but let’s be careful with the initial batch) to every domestic household. Inflation and the value of the ruble may take a little hit but it doesn’t matter, GDP would go brrr…
Anyway, this is what I said from the beginning that I wanted to avoid: debating crackpot monetary policy. Thanks for the discussion though, the idea that the distribution of the stimulus packages has been suboptimal possibly has merit.
I think the debate over what is “Balkan” and what isn’t is a bit dumb and pointless imo. I also don’t really care whether Romania and/or Greece are considered as “Balkan” or not.
To me what’s more important is that the term “Balkan” is usually used in English language media to cover up anything good or positive about Serbia and Serbs, to pretend as if its some sort of universal regional phenomenon, while when anything bad or negative is about Serbia and Serbs, it is explicitly referred to as being of ethnic Serb origin.
The term “West Balkans” is even more ridiculously loaded because it implies that there is something Western about all the countries in the Balkans that exclude Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. Of course, the purpose of this is to legitimize and justify “Euro-Atlantic integration” of the part of the Balkans that is still not integrated or resisting (mostly Serbs and Serbia).
From what I understand, Balkan is a Turkish word/phrase although of which exact combination, I’m not sure. There’s also the Latin Haemus Mons which could perhaps be a more accurate or appropriate term. Still, anyone that uses “Haemus Mons” is usually some sort of ancient-Illyrian LARPer and it’s an excellent sign of a mentally unhinged and deranged person.
Good luck with your girlfriend and your new fangled way of scoring some free meals, although I can think of many other more pleasant ways to accomplish the same thing! 🙂
In all seriousness, I think that Thulean Friend could be telling the truth about himself. That is, if he meets at least three of the following criteria:
1.)an Indian donated an organ to him
2.)pulled him from a burning building
3.)rescued him from a desert island
4.)pushed him out of the way of a speeding car (perhaps, this is why he hates cars?)
5.)he looks like the Elephant Man and this endears him to his Indian girlfriend
6.)the Indians have developed a chip which they implant into people’s brains
7.)there is a new retrovirus out there that turns you into an Indian
8.)African migrants made a voodoo doll of him, and buried it in a jar of curry
9.)Indians have turned him into a Manchurian candidate to give Harris a promotion.
I was going to try to go for ten, but I can’t do it.
And on the other side, he could honestly say that he has Swedish blood, if he got a bone marrow transplant from a compatible Swede.
Happy to help:
10)He is a member of some strange Hindu sect, which has brainwashed him.
Even I thought about a week ago that he is a Swede, but why a Swede would speak so personally and emotionally about the founders and leftists of India?
A liberal or progressive Swede would feel a natural affinity towards the Indian left.
If you don’t like Venezuela, we can take any other random country. Morocco, Turkey, Montenegro,… Their governments should stop wasting time and send helicopters to poor neighborhoods every morning to drop bags of freshly printed cash.
All those countries have fiat currencies that they create out thin air and helicopter drop to rich people. It’s no different from US or anywhere else. They just don’t have the aircraft carriers to make the rest of the world take their money, but domestically it’s the same process. And it’s the same argument – channeling more free fiat to the bottom of income distribution will generate higher nominal GDP growth compared to channeling free fiat to the top of the income distribution. It may also result in higher inflation but that’s policy preference and you can evaluate tradeoffs between higher GDP growth rate and inflation and decide how much of each will you prefer.
But mechanics are exactly the same.
As a matter of fact, let’s imagine Russia. Mr Mishustin should issue a 50 million ruble check (I know that you said unlimited but let’s be careful with the initial batch) to every domestic household. Inflation and the value of the ruble may take a little hit but it doesn’t matter, GDP would go brrr…
It would. Ruble would devalue, there would inflation due to that, but nominal GDP in rubles would go up by definition. It would then become a question of comparing inflation rate to nominal GDP growth rate. If nGDP > inflation rate it would worth it, if not, it wouldn’t .
Anyway, this is what I said from the beginning that I wanted to avoid: debating crackpot monetary policy. Thanks for the discussion though, the idea that the distribution of the stimulus packages has been suboptimal possibly has merit.
What’s so crackpot about channeling more fiat currency to the bottom of income distribution? What is crackpot is you imagining money not being fiat, as if we were under gold standard or something. It’s not 1920’s anymore. Money is fiat and we will be creating $quadrillions of it keep the the global economy limping along. This not debatable, this is an objective reality that you can observe by rising global debt levels. It is an irreversible process. If you don’t see it, you are a crackpot.
All I’m saying is that if we will be creating $quadrillions of dollars in the near future anyway, it will be more economically efficient to direct a significant portion of it to the bottom of the income distribution rather than the top as we usually do.
Only an utterly delusional idiot would claim that there arent smart Africans. Its just that their share/proportion of population is much smaller in comparison to Europeans and Asians.
African migrants to USA are normally high achieving folks, but no wonder, its just statistics, if you collect just the cream of the milk you will get just cream, duh!
Not that I care at all about where Thulean Friend is from, but for the Easterners here who may not be so familiar with Western culture, and the Wesrern right wingers here who aren’t familiar with high brow Leftist culture;
Its not uncommon for some people in the West to develop an enthusiasm for a foreign, exotic culture, and become experts on it and even identify with it. The most common country to do this with is Japan, where there is even a term for this kind of thing.
But I’ve seen it down with some truly random countries, like Hungary. Russia used to be another popular subject. It used to be common with the English to do this with regard to Arabia, at one point. T.E Lawrence is the obvious example.
Robert Byron traveled to Persia and wrote a book on the architecture of that region. Rebecca West wrote a book on the Balkans, and particularly Serbia, that is considered a classic.
In the West, this kind of thing boosts your intellectual credentials- developing an eccentric enthusiasm for some foreign culture is cool and shows a broad mind.
It also acts as a surrogate for the traditional culture the West rid itself of. People yearn for what they have lost, and they can only allow themselves to get it by taking a supposedly intellectual interest in some exotic culture. At home, one must be impeccably rational.
India is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating places on earth, and has fascinated countless Westerners. There is nothing unusual about developing an interest in it, among Westerners. Countless people have written books on India.
And of TF had an Indian girlfriend, or Indians married into his family, there is even less of a mystery.
Is economic development a precondition for soft power, or are both expressions of an underlying dynamism?
As you note, China is not actually a wealthy country. Its just a huge country, and its rising from a very low base. China also benefits from a unique moment in history – all advanced economies offshored their manufacturing to China, creating a unique wealth creating situation that doesn’t necessarily speak to an underlying capacity for dynamic creativity.
In other words, the kind of creative dynamism that leads to both wealth and soft power, is not in evidence in China. There is a desperate effort on Unz to persuade us that China is a leading technology creator, but if this were true, it would be undeniable. No persuading would be required. There is some evidence it is beginning to move in that direction, as both you and TF note that China has become a top developer of some electronic music equipment etc. But this feels, as of now, more niche, and less characteristic.
I’m not saying the Chinese don’t have potential. As you know, I’m a huge admirer of ancient Chinese culture. But the heavy hand of the CCP may be preventing that potential from breaking through. It may be, that China simply can’t make the leap to dynamic creativity under the repressive CCP. China may have gone aa far as it can under the CCP.
After all, how can there be something cringeworthy in it simply reciting facts and expressing pride in them?
I thought I explained this with the Freddy Corleone reference. It’s not the facts themselves I take issue with, nor even the idea of taking some basic pride in them. It’s the idea of using them to pretend to be much greater or more important than you are. When you’re a primitive peasant backwater culture like Serbia, the very idea of grandiose self-importance is intrinsically pathetic.
I’ll grant that the extent of Serbian primitiveness may not have been quite evident to a Serbian patriot in 1918 – the kind of Serbian patriot who penned the song in question, let’s say – so I’ll make an allowance for patriots back in those days who felt this way. But the fact that this song was passed down to me, some three generations later, strongly suggests to me that Serbian patriotic attitudes changed very little in the intervening seventy years – when, by rights, they should have changed a great deal. And this was far from the only such song I heard growing up; songs like it were part of the air I breathed, though I’ve forgotten most of them. (One I remember – Ovo Je Srbija – not an old song, dating perhaps to the early 80s, is hauntingly beautiful and was one of my dad’s favorites. He’d get near teary-eyed listening to it.)
And yes, it is a fact that Serbia won in all those wars from 1912-1918
Yes, and singlehandedly too, in Serbian nationalist mythology. I grew up having virtually no idea of the role played by other, typically more important, contributors to those (and earlier) war efforts – efforts without which pipsqueak Serbia would have found herself stomped. That’s pretty amazing, when you think about it.
Still, I’m curious, who exactly where your ancestors?
Any Croats in your ancestry by chance?
Oh FFS, I wrote a big long effort post for you on this, and then apparently deleted the fucking thing attempting to insert a “MORE” tag.
No way am I rewriting all that again. Briefly: no Croat; some Greek and Vlach on mother’s side, all from Macedonia and Greece, and some Vlach on father’s side too, from Macedonia. Father’s side grandparents, great-grandparents (not sure) relocated to Macedonia long ago. Still have (had) family in Nis and Pristina, and in Greece from mother’s side. Grew up in nationalistic Serbian home.
We cracked the code – Thulean Friend is Yuri Bezmenov! Of course he would counter that Bezmenov has been dead for a while, but that’s exactly what he would want you to think! He is the undead Yuri Bezmenov.
I was going to say “common law wife”, but I think “in an open relationship with an Indian girlfriend, who enjoys cucking him” would be more appropriate. That is, if he is a Swede.
Though, I, for one, think that his parents are still trying to find him a bride from the right jati.
Well, the current international language is English. USA and Europe literally dominates international dialogue and information spread. Any country or culture can only gain a foothold if allowed. Indians have free reign in the USA right now. They have permission from the Jewish media and Hollywood.
So you will see a lot of the tv shows n movies having Indian actors and promoting indian culture. Even supposed white supremacist Steve Bannon is promoting Indians.and culture. That should tell you everything. I hope the chinese understands this fact.
Dmitry’s point about economic level. I agree. I have been saying the same exact thing. But I include hardpower and status into the requirements too.
Hardpower, and money.
Soft power and status would come naturally when those two are at a certain level. Think about the american military combined with Hollywood. What do you get? Answer is simple right?
Of course they’re a part of the Balkans, 100%. Not only geographically, but racially and culturally too. Balkans nations look the same, behave the same, mostly worship the same. If they were saner, there’d be a healthy movement towards a more unified Balkans identity. Sadly, sanity is in short supply there. In many ways, they are only geographically European. If they were an island, like Britain, say, I believe far fewer people would bother to attach the label “European” to them. It’s like the Caucasus. It’s quite a stretch, but if you were up to it, you could attempt to include them as European; but no one really bothers – not even lefties – because they’re so culturally repellent.
As for blond hair, yes I agree. I still have hard-wired preference for people who look like me no matter how irrational. It’s a bit funny and sad at the same time, but I’ve come to accept that I just have to live with it.
The more China manages to compete in higher technology the more Westerners feel the need to claim that China can only steal technology and that they don’t have any ability to invent anything by themselves. Your posts exemplify this behavior.
As for blond hair, yes I agree. I still have hard-wired preference for people who look like me
I remember this comment. I assume he was fibbing, in order to tweak us all, but there are other possibilities:
1.)Dyes his hair
2.)has light brown hair, being a mischling and other Indians call him “blondie” in celebration of it.
3.)notice the punctuation between “yes I agree” and “I still have a hard-wired preference for people who look like me.”
Alright, I have worked it out of my system. I promise I will make no more posts about crypto-Indians – at least on this thread. Though, since I still have this box to fill:
It is perhaps a bit alarming that Dmitry, being keen-eyed, and of sharp memory, found that past damning comment that Polish Perspective made, revealing his true nature. (Though, I think even with the personality differences, they do not have the same textual fingerprint – I assume he was a different Indian.) Dmitry’s idea that they are the same person strikes me as eccentric. In fact, I should say, the idea that nobody ever leaves this blog, but is just re-incarnated as a new personality, is a very charming notion, or, at least, it would be, if only it weren’t based on Indian mythology.
Dmitry, it seems, thought he could throw off the scent by tossing one of his own off the sled! Or what would be the Indian equivalent? The elephant?
The only question is distribution – who gets it. Why should only the rich get free money?
Of course it is unjust–but policymakers actually have no choice.
If they gave all the free money to the poor, then the poor would spend it and the velocity of money would explode.
Then we would have off the charts inflation that would be impossible to hide.
(I think they are all stinking kleptocrats who deserve the guillotine–don’t get me wrong–but giving the money to the poor would blow up the economy very quickly–and no public policy type would intentionally go there unless their New Zealand dacha had already been secured.)
Utu is is probably right, no leftist Swede would comment on a site like this. They have a strong and well internalised world view where such things as race or religious or ethnic biases dont exist. For them our discussions here would just sound plainly mad. But there are always exceptions, though TH would be quite extreme one with his anti-muslim biases.
Last summer I participated a Buddhist retreat in one of the Nordic countries, and there I befriended with a one Swedish psychologist, he was well travelled, learned and affluent, but oddly for him there wasnt any problem if all Swedes would be slowly replaced by immigrants. Such concepts as ethnic continuity were totally alien for him. Of course he could understand that there are people who think strongly about such matters, but for him such thinking arised from fear and poverty etc.
That’s the whole point though – we want the velocity of money to explode. If velocity of money increases we will not need to create as much debt to drive GDP growth which in turn will lower our debt to GDP ratios. So will inflation by the way.
And basic incomes can be easily throttled and manipulated via interest rates just like we regulate money supply from commercial banks currently.
So the odds of hyperinflation are remote. And moderate inflation will grow nominal GDP so we want that anyway to make debt loads more reasonable.
The way we do macroeconomic policy today is just dumb. In US alone we created $80 trillion of free money that is utilized highly inefficiently and we need dozens of $trillions more in the future just to keep afloat and we wouldnt need that if we got money velocity going again.
Lowering inflationary expectations (once serious inflation kicks in) is a treacherous game, and many governments in history have collapsed because they couldn’t handle it.
Once the public believes that inflation is out of control, it gets out of control and stays out of control.
Economic models and tinkering with interest rates and even fiscal policy become of academic interest at that point.
I got the impression that your heritage is from the Balkans? Do you despise your own heritage? Can I ask why? Because you complain lot about the Balkans, but with my limited English I havent yet gotten anything substantial. Just that church was boring and theres lots of chauvinistic nationalism. But such is quite common among the cultures of Eurasia. I mean national fantasies and rivalries, old religious traditions that dont always make outwardly sense and so on.
I agree with you that they should unite, at least the Christian parts + Bosnia.
I don’t want to break my promise, so I won’t use the word that is sometimes treated as a synonym with “Native American”, or even its first letter, but I will say this: oddly enough, people with Chinese blood seem to dominate my whitelist of confirmed non-______s. It seems as though _____s, due to their natural antipathy for real Asians, have trouble pretending to be them.
But perhaps, it was a mistake to let them onto this. They may update their tactics, and destroy the last refuge, leaving me with the African commenters that I may have alienated, like Bliss and Spear_chucker, should they return.
After all, I may admire Enoch Powell’s scholarship and abilities, but where was he posted? And Aaron_B puts on a pretty good show about being a Jew, but where exactly was his favorite “English” author Kipling born?
How would you generate inflation? Average American can barely afford $1,000 emergency car repair. Majority of people don’t have even meanful retirement savings they can raid.
In order for the can of beans to cost $1,000, somebody has to pay $1,000 for it. Basic supply and demand. Where will that $1,000 come from? American savings? Nope, they don’t have any. (Well, some do, but they would have to buy millions of cans of beans per “saver” to deplete their savings – not going to happen).
Wages? Do you seriously see Walmart raising their cashiers pay to $1,000/hr? It’s just not going to happen.
People believed there would be hyperinflation after 2008. People believed there would be hyperinflation in Japan. People believe there will be hyperinflation now after $trillions spent in stimulus. People are clueless.
Meanwhile, before the pandemic, US posted pathetic 2.3% real GDP growth rate in 2019 while running almost 5% Fed budget defict and record levels of corporate debt. AND moron banks managed to get themselves into a repo crisis.
Pandemic helped mask all that but US economy was falling apart well before that. Meanwhile, people masturbate over imaginary inflation. Just like Japanese government idiots who hike consumption taxes and then wonder why their economy plunges into recession again.
I guess we will need to print another $100-200 trillion in debt before economists activate their brain cells and see what is happening in the real world.
The pre-Revolutionary Greek agitator, Rigas Feraios had an idea of a culturally Greek Balkan federation built on Enlightenment values in the late 1700s. Unfortunately, he was betrayed, arrested by the Austrians and executed by the Ottomans.
Kind of weird to exclude the Balkans from Europe given Greece is part of the Balkans.
I agree that under current policies inflation is impossible because “average folks” don’t have the money to spend.
All I am saying is that if they suddenly had the money–they would spend it and spend it quickly–which would drive inflationary expectations.
Academic economists could (correctly) point out that such expectations are totally irrational–but people act on irrational beliefs–in fact all hyper-inflation scenarios are people acting on irrational beliefs.
The Twitter comment is proving beyond any doubt that our initial fears of Artificial Intelligence were badly misplaced–it appears our greatest enemy will turn out to be Artificial Stupidity.
Hmm, if so, why was the West quite willing to recognize the technological achievements of the Japanese. European states were also quite competitive and hostile towards each other, but England was quite prepared to recognize the achievements of Germany and France, and vice versa.
The USA was also very willing to recognize the scientific breakthroughs of the Soviet Union, and was so threatened by them that it spurred massive educational reforms and government efforts to catch up at the highest level. There is no comparable sense of technological threat from China- instead, there is a sense that Chkna steals Westerm technology.
So, there isn’t a history of political competition leading to denying the technological achievements of hostile competitors. Rather, it hass frequently spurred internal reform. Secondly, the scientific community is generally intellectually more curious and broad minded than the average person, and leans left. They tend not to care about politics.
I submit that dynamic creativity cannot be achieved under a repressive regime like the CCP, which doesn’t permit the needed level of anarchism and free thought.
Under the CCP, China will become more powerful and wealthy, but will hit a wall. Which may be ok. Maybe the CCP was needed for a time to achieve that.
But I don’t expect China to become interesting until it becomes less repressive.
Not my “heritage” (if that’s taken to mean “ancestry”), but the cultural practices, the beliefs, the ‘ways of being,’ the customs, the common attitudes, and other things of that nature, I generally find it idiotic and stultifying; I grew tired of it a long time (I burned out during the Yugoslav wars) and have no patience for it today. Part of it, I guess, is also a reaction to the ways I was raised, to the things I taught were of importance but which I came to have a contemptuous disregard for.
Yet despite all that, in the diaspora, where I was born and raised, people of these ethnic backgrounds are my preferred company, especially when they’re as acculturated to western ways as I am. Just having the identity itself, without any other accoutrements, is enough for me. I also care very little about goings on in the balkans themselves, unlike Totally Anonymous, who appears to live and breath it.
Also, if I’m willing to be self-critical, it’s a mistake to interpret it as a sign of self-loathing. There’s a certain power in it. You develop the ability to see yourself more clearly, to understand the criticisms of others, to lose the instinct to become agitated when others criticize you. It’s a trick I indirectly learnt off the Anglos – though I’d never take it as far as those cucked out fools have.
I knw about the Berbers. There are even people who claim connections between Berber and Celtic languages. I did not know about the Georgians or the Southern Italians. The British stone circles are an odd number, 9, 11 or 13 being the most common with a larger isolated stone, called the Heel Stone to the North West. *Most isolated Menhirs/Maenhirs are Heel Staones which have lost their circles. Nearby will be a “hill fort”, probably used for sky burials like modern Farsees and, as you show, a tumulus; we use the word Barrow; to act as the final grave. The passage into the barrow is aligned with the sun at Midsummer. No surviving British Barrow is as magnificent as the one you show, although the Barrow at Newgrange in Ireland certainly is.
Reminds me of that English historian who popularised the stories about China inventing everything and was in a menage à trois with his English wife and Chinese student
Women & men trad live seperately.
Brothers one house, wives another.
Less nagging
People didn’t adopt nuclear families due to necessity
but from white supremacy||
White fragility functions as a form of bullying; I am going to make it so miserable for you to confront me—no matter how diplomatically you try to do so—that you will simply back off, give up, and never raise the issue again. White fragility keeps people of color in line and “in their place.”
p. 119
White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.
Karlin’s forum is a small cafe, with only a couple dozen of regular customers. I’m surprised how little people seem to remember of each other.
I remember when Thulean Friend said he was 20 years old. Also I can remember that he was originally supporting nationalism, before he became interested in ecology.
He was called Polish Perspective a couple of years ago. He already said nationalists in Sweden are like communitarian leftists of other countries. https://www.unz.com/akarlin/generation-zyklon-in-sweden/#comment-2345758 Aaronb similarly switched his views compared to what they were a few years ago.
The interest in Indian politics is unusual, although I’m not sure Thulean is such an unrepresentative sample in his change from nationalism to ecology.
A high proportion of teenage boys are interested in nationalism and patriotism (I remember this myself when I was in youth). A more unusual thing is to meet people with those views in their 20s. Once you are thrown onto real life, and to start to go to work in a normal job – these projections of your personal identity onto historically arbitrary segment of planet earth, and hundreds of millions of people you will never meet, might start to seem like teenage fantasy or form of procrastination.
In terms of being an ecologist. This is attracting crazy people, as a messianic religion, which is unfortunate, as the general viewpoint that we need to reduce the release of toxic chemicals that will give us cancer should be common opinion.
China has become a top developer of some electronic music equipment etc. But this feels, as of now, more niche, and less characteristic.
There are segments of China’s population, which will develop connoisseurship about aspects of culture. For example, classical music is popular in China, and by learning piano a proportion of the next generation will become connoisseurs about classical music.
For example, China is the now the second largest market for sales of pianos. (By comparison, in Russia piano sales are in very bad decline, despite that in Russia there is inherited one of the world’s most important traditions of piano pedagogy).
A strange thing is that the proportion of acoustic piano sales is higher in China, than the world average. Buying even the lowest entry range of Yamaha acoustic pianos, is expensive relative to China’s incomes. So this is counter-intuitive.
China’s piano market hits the right note for Yamaha
TOKYO — Yamaha, a major manufacturer of pianos, now sells more of the instruments in China than in its home market of Japan.
This reflects both China’s size and its growing enthusiasm for children’s music education. Yamaha’s instrument business in China, led by pianos, more than tripled over the decade ended in March. The country now accounts for 17% of Yamaha’s total instrument sales, up from just 5% 10 years ago..
Yamaha’s 30,000 yuan ($4,250) upright pianos make up about 15% of the instruments Yamaha sells in China. “The typical customer is a married couple in their 30s with a monthly income of a little over 10,000 yuan, who are buying the piano for children aged 3 to 5,” said Teruhiko Tsurumi, executive general manager of Yamaha’s musical instruments unit.
Many couples choose to have only one child despite the end of China’s one-child policy. This allows parents to splurge on their child’s education. A quarter of the pianos Yamaha sells overall are acoustic, but in China the figure is 40%..
One problem with the Chinese is that they do not seem to have English language websites for their arms industry, like totally zero? Like when you try to search for Norinco or the Chinese corporate website for the JF-17, or the VT-4, by typing JF-17 or VT-4, it turns up zero? Like you do not get a website where you get things like presentations and brochures about their products, unlike Western arms manufacturers? But then when I tried to google for the English language corporate website for the SU-30 by typing Su-30 or MiG-29 I cannot find anything either. I mean if someone has to know Russian or Chinese before they can find those websites, or detailed information about their products, that is clearly a large marketing oversight.
China will be an interesting test case of whether a repressive society, with things like social credit and surveillance, can nurture creativity.
Intuitively, one would say no. Historically, the record says no.
But, it may be that China needed a period of social repression to get back on track after the ravages of the cultural revolution. The Chinese people, as I have argued elsewhere, are more chaotic, anarchich, individualistic, non-cooperative, unruly, and hard to rule than Westerners, which is precisely why China needs a very strong, authoritarian government on occasion to get the people in line, whereas more cooperative Westerners can be trusted with more freedom, and thus end up being more creative.
However, there are periods where China gets the balance between anarchy and authoritarian rule right, like during the highly creative and glorious Tang dynasty, when anarchic, free spirited Taoism nicely balanced out the rigid rules of Confucius.
So the repressive CCP may just be a transitional phase, a necessary evil to be discarded later. Chinese creativity may yet get a chance to make interesting and impressive contributions to world culture.
However, I don’t think it will be the kind of Promethean creativity that has characterized the West. As much as China seems to have broken with its past and modeled itself on Enlightenment ideals, it seems not to have absorbed the Promethean spirit, and instead borrowed legalistic, bureaucratic elements of Western culture that mirror elements in its own history.
Cultures tend to repeat themselves, with a twist. I think China will have a New Tang Dynasty, with a strong anarchic, naturalistic, Taoist flavor, in a modern technological setting. China will humanize technology and show how it can integrate with nature, rather than dominate it, as the West has conceived of technology.
This will be a new theme in world culture, a departure from the Western theme of technology dominating nature and being in a fight with nature. The next step in the evolution of workd culture, which, as so often, will actually be a step back from the excesses of the domination of nature paradigm, which has led to the destruction of sl much beauty.
I think too this will be a world trend. Already, apparently, cities in Europe are restricting technology for humanistic reasons, like beauty and livability, as TF points put, whereas a few decades ago the idea that we should control technology, rather than following wherever it may lead, would have been unthinkable.
However, for the time being, China is still boring, and it will take decades till it fulfills its promise, which is a recreation of the beautiful things of its past in modern setting, like all cultures.
From a perspective of the wealthy people, there’s a balance here between a desire to avoid too unfriendly relations with the West (which might result in direct sanctions on yourself ), and also a desire to avoid Russia having too friendly relations with the West (which results in intergovernmental co-operation).
Part of reason that wealthy people choose a country for moving their money to – is that this destination country for moving money to, doesn’t have overly close relationship to the home country from which the money originates.
If the country you move your money to, is an ally of your home country, then there is the danger that they will sign agreements on things like taxation, sharing of mutual information, financial transparency and surveillance, as well as (in the final worst case scenario) mutually agreed extradition treaties.
So, from the oligarch perspective – moving your money to an allied country of Russia (which could have agreements on sharing of mutual information about financial transactions, taxation, extradition), could defeat the insurance benefit of moving your money to another country.
Some of the reason to move money, is to “hedge bets” against possible expropriation and to avoid too much transparency and knowledge about this money – as well as the simple desire to “diversify” (which latter also benefits from putting money into diverse economies which are somewhat decoupled from each other).
Viktor Vekselberg Loses Swiss Sanctions Lawsuit
I think Vekselberg is clever at maintaining a publicity distance from the source of his wealth, that is in Sverdlovsk region in Russia.
Sverdlovsk is the source foundation of his wealth. He owns many different things, from airport, to the construction companies, which co-incidentally build the region’s overproduction of churches. He owns a large part of core industries like Kamensk-Uralsky’s metallurgy.
But he seems to be a quieter, more distant owner, that benefits from some degree of “Mount Olympus effect”. This might be where the owner of the business tries to be less visible, more distant, and reduces their media footprint. Therefore, local people won’t blame you for everything.
On the other hand, Altushkin and Kozitsyn, are the more unpopular oligarchs in the media, because they seem more local, and residents can directly blame them for a day of bad pollution.
There is regular media coverage talking about Altushkin’s house in London, and his children living in UK, and their British citizenship – but I didn’t yet read about Vekselberg’s house in London, or whether his children are also British citizens.
“Mount Olympus effect” also seems to be something parallel with politicians. More locally accessible seeming to be are politicians, the more peoples’ blame for problems goes to them when something is wrong.
There’s an amusing ad campaign being run now to try to draw tourists to Puerto Rico. Has the servitors wearing masks, and it highlights passport-free travel – as though that is a good thing to have with Puerto Rico.
It was a good thing to have with Canada – at one point.
If you really want to learn about chinese weapon systems. Visit credible defences sub reddit. It is american centric, alot of pile on hate for china like every other sub reddit, but it also has a few chinese arms experts posting about every major chinese weapons n ships. Most of the time with photos and alot of details.
Ignore the retarded posters. Focus on the few true experts.
It’s not the facts themselves I take issue with, nor even the idea of taking some basic pride in them. It’s the idea of using them to pretend to be much greater or more important than you are.
The original video (can’t seem to find it anymore) of that song I watched actually showed you how the size of Serbia grew slowly but gradually, and how it indeed became larger and larger, both in territorial size and population through successful military victories in wars.
That is, Principality of Serbia 1817, 1833. Kingdom of Serbia 1878, 1912, 1913. Kingdom of Serbia 1918 and then Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1918.
Perhaps maybe I could post images of these respective territorial sizes, but if you know any history and bothered to read at least a little, I’m sure you’ll understand what I mean and roughly what sort of map changes I’m talking.
Still, it’s clear that Serbia and Serbs absolutely can be larger and more important then they really are, but internal flaws in the character of Serbs aside, the reason this isn’t the case is because they’re being constantly artificially and relentlessly pushed down by large and powerful foreign empires.
When you’re a primitive peasant backwater culture like Serbia, the very idea of grandiose self-importance is intrinsically pathetic.
That’s an arrogant and condescending modernist-Liberal attitude to have. The assumption that there is something “primitive” or “backward” about “peasant culture” is very obnoxious and factually problematic.
It actually looks very good and even better with each passing day compared to how well this “advanced” and “progressive” Western Liberal-Multicultural Zionist empire and system is literally in a spiral of downward decay with all its pathologies, desperately trying to maintain its power and relevance through all sorts of malevolent and dirty tricks.
But the fact that this song was passed down to me, some three generations later, strongly suggests to me that Serbian patriotic attitudes changed very little in the intervening seventy years – when, by rights, they should have changed a great deal.
Why should they have changed a great deal though?
Traditions aren’t really traditions at all if they can be easily changed.
The fact that they didn’t is actually a very good thing because it suggests that despite being the fodder for forming a demented anti-Serb Yugoslav project, Serbs managed to survive yet another round or two of denationalization, de-ethnicization and deracination efforts in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Communist SFR Yugoslavia. In fact, given all the disasters and catastrophes Serbs and Serbia have undergone in the 20th century, it’s actually a miracle that they even exist at all today, which may not have been the case if things had gone a little bit differently in WW1, WW2 or even the 1990’s.
And this was far from the only such song I heard growing up; songs like it were part of the air I breathed, though I’ve forgotten most of them.
Seems like I have more in common with your dad than you …
I grew up having virtually no idea of the role played by other, typically more important, contributors to those (and earlier) war efforts – efforts without which pipsqueak Serbia would have found herself stomped.
You could have just read a bit of history if you were truly interested, you know. Although I do understand that those were pre-internet days.
More importantly though, the thing about “pipsqueak Serbia” is that despite having a bunch of “reliable” Western allies, it did end up getting “stomped” but still somehow came out on top despite that in military terms, although not political ones (e.g. WW1 and Thessaloniki/Solun Front especially).
Oh FFS, I wrote a big long effort post for you on this, and then apparently deleted the fucking thing attempting to insert a “MORE” tag.
That’s why you should be a bit careful with, and maybe even save longer Unz Review comments, or be prepared to improvise fast and creatively when you edit your comment in the 5 minute time limit.
Briefly: no Croat; some Greek and Vlach on mother’s side, all from Macedonia and Greece, and some Vlach on father’s side too, from Macedonia. Father’s side grandparents, great-grandparents (not sure) relocated to Macedonia long ago. Still have (had) family in Nis and Pristina, and in Greece from mother’s side. Grew up in nationalistic Serbian home.
This tells us 2 interesting things.
First, some of your ancestors were possibly Greek Phanariotes, who are infamous among non-Greeks of the Balkans for their Jewy behavior in the times of the Ottoman Empire, and that some of your other ancestors or relatives in Macedonia (if you have any in North Macedonia currently) are maybe some sort of Monkeydonians LARPing as a real nation.
Much more importantly, this betrays just how much of a Former Serb you really are. An interesting phenomenon, although also truly despicable and disgusting. You’re not actually very different from Milo Djukanovic (he literally changed from being a Serb to becoming a “non-Serb Montenegrin” in the middle of his political career), all the so-called “non-Serb Montenegrins”, Bosnian Muslims and Croats who all hysterically and pathologically hate Serbs because, even though they’ll never consciously admit it, they are all too well aware of the fact that their ancestors were all Serbs, that they are pathetic traitors, fake trash and worthless scum (although some of them were coerced into being non-Serbs to be fair). Some of them have managed to come around to acknowledging and embracing their true ancestry and heritage, but most are still far from that.
Of course, I’m sure that if Serbs and Serbia were more successful, more prosperous and had fared differently in the 1990’s (especially by using the missed window of opportunity to decisively win the war in Bosnia in the 2nd half of 1993), then you would likely feel very differently. Your complex of being a Former Serb would not exist if Serbia and Serbs were more successful, prosperous and well-off.
You’d be better off to either go all the way to disconnect yourself from any ties with your roots and assimilate into whatever you fancy, or just return to your roots and repent from you pathetic “Однарођивање”.
I mean when you go to the website of Boeing, BAE, or Dassault you see well-designed presentations about what they are selling, whereas the Chinese and Russian manufacturers do not even have an English-language website for their products that you can easily find. That is a large problem with regards to the way they communicate their products with their potential customers or even just casual visitors. Or maybe they think that since their deals are government-t0-government, having a good-looking website for the foreign public to see is not an important project? For example when you go to see Irkut’s English website, you see very well-designed presentations about the features of their products, as well as their key selling points, similar to what you will see in Boeing’s and Airbus’ websites.
Teenage boy “nationalism and patriotism” is cheesy and a sensible man will quickly grow out of it. However, once a man starts to go to work, they can easily be lost in the ultimate nihilism of a corporate job where one is used and then discarded at any time driven by shareholder demands expected of management. Similarly, what is the point of many other jobs. However, when raising a family, patriotism matters a lot because you have to impart an identity on your kingdom. And there is nothing really arbitrary about ethnicity. It is deep-seated and in most cases ancient. In fact, studies of kin selection and in-group bias suggest it is also based in nature. Being able to relate to millions of people you have never meet should not seen as somehow tiresome but amazing that a thread, sometimes obvious but sometimes tenuous, runs through such a large group of seemingly unconnected people.
Balkan Slavs should be grateful to the Greek Phanariotes because many of them essentially funded the early part of the Greek Revolution of 1821. If this did not happen it would have taken a lot longer for the Balkan Slavs to be liberated from the backward and pathetic Ottomans of the 19th century.
AK’s opinions on a lot of topics must be understood in the context of him being mostly Russian. I think he has valuable things to say on some issues but I discount a lot of what he opines on in his neighbourhood.
I was reading the archive lately from 2014. The initial posts on Ukraine were just deranged and obviously driven by emotional fervor. To his credit, he later revised his views and came to a more sensible conclusion. But that took a long while and it doesn’t excuse the initial nonsense he pushed early on.
I view his comments on China possibly taking in a large amount of Central Asians in similar veins: more wishful thinking – he wishes for China to offload Russia – than grounded in a hard-nosed reading of China’s internal dynamics.
Once you accept this defect of his, you can move past it and still read some of his takes on other topics which can be worthwhile.
You’re correct that Russia’s oil & gas rents are much more worth than EU gibs. I’ve remarked that Russia’s poverty cannot be explained away by concepts like ‘resource curse’. Australia is highly dependent on commodities.
Russians may be less competent than Anglos. But even if you accept that, they are definitely punching way below where they could. Russia should be doing far better than barely above Mexico, which is what they are doing now. Clearly this is wounding the pride of Russian nationalists, that should be self-explanatory.
That said, AK’s argument is actually better than he realises. It’s too bad he is too incompetent to make it. Namely: the big benefit of the EU isn’t the gibs. It’s trade. You see, the EU’s main strength isn’t just a free-trade area. It’s a common single market.
The difference between a free trade and single market may not be obvious but this article does a good job explaining it. If Russia had been part of the single market, I think Russia and Poland would be a lot closer. Russia would still likely be poorer, though, due to lower human capital. Gibs are nowhere near as impactful as Russia’s oil and gas rents, as you rightly point out. But trade is the great equaliser and the single market is the supercharger of this.
The spread of cultural and religious influences were from west to east in the Indian ocean, so Indian Muslim merchants are much bigger reason than couple of Chinese pseudo-Muslims like Zheng He.
Which is why the Cholas should have finished the job more thoroughly. Both of you start too late in history. If the Cholas would have succeeded in a deep saffronisation of South-East Asia, even centuries of subsequent moslem rule wouldn’t have changed that (just as moslem rule over Spain didn’t).
I also care very little about goings on in the balkans themselves, unlike Totally Anonymous, who appears to live and breath it.
Even though I’m diaspora like you, don’t exaggerate the extent to which I care.
For instance, I don’t care about “black chronicles” news like who committed what violent crime where, or tabloid news about how e.g. in Novi Sad some guys got drunk and brutally beat each other up over gambling money several weeks ago, etc.
I care about the important stuff which really matters. The geopolitics of the Balkans and the wellbeing of ethnic Serbs. All of that is unfortunately bound to deteriorate very rapidly when what looks like a Joe Biden presidency comes to power. Especially the wellbeing and existence of Republika Srpska and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina as I’ve highlighted earlier in this thread (also likely efforts to reinstate Milo Djukanovic and the DPS in Montenegro, more pressure over Kosovo, etc).
Even if another round of catastrophes and disasters are going to hit Serbs in the next few years and decades to come (after all, Serbs just barely survived ethnocide/cultural genocide in Montenegro in 2020, this year), I still think and feel it’s worth it to hold and defend my heritage, ancestry and ethnicity no matter what. It’s clearly worth quite a lot if it’s something that’s so viciously attacked, demonized, and targeted for destruction across the centuries, particularly the last one, and the struggle is still ongoing. There’s also the fact that West European and Anglo-American countries in general have very bleak future prospects for their founding populations making it a bizarre choice to want to be in that category, especially considering my origins.
Then again, as Dragos Kalajic has said (Not sure if you can read and understand Cyrillic),
“Ако хоћете да будете истински Срби – морате знати да то веома скупо кошта а ништа не доноси, изузев мука, патњи и страдања. Ако за то нисте способни – боље је да се повучете са овог најопаснијег места у Евроазији и да одете у бели свет, да не сметате осталима својим гласним страховањима и жалопојкама. Морате знати да ће рајински менталитет, ванредно способан да се увек и свуда докопа власти и одржи на њој, свако ваше сврставање на страну свог народа награђивати поругама, срамоћењем и прогонима. Ваш избор мора бити слободан од сваке бриге за исход. Једнако морате бити слободни од жудње за победом, као и од страха спрам пораза. Ваша одлука мора бити чиста и неусловљива. Само тако ћете бити достојни српске улоге и традиције.”
Clearly being a Serb is not for everyone and that’s fine if that’s the case for you. To a degree, even I’m also a diaspora LARPer as well.
If Russia had been part of the single market, I think Russia and Poland would be a lot closer.
This is not how it would have played out. True, for smaller submissive country such as Poland, trade is important. Poland trade to GDP ratio is 55%, Russia – 20-30%, US – 20-30%, China – 30-40% , for comparison.
If Russia joined common market, EU regulations would destroy Russian aerospace industry (can’t have Sukhoi, Irkut etc compete with Airbus), destroy Russian nuclear industry (can’t have Rosatom compete with Europeans), destroy Russian space industry (Roscosmos is superior to ESA with 14 successful launches this year vs 4 for Europe), destroy Russian heavy industry (environment), destroy Russian military industry (not compatible with NATO standards), destroy Russian agriculture (too competitive again).
EU would gut Russia like a fish. And sure, Russians would get to make electric buses for Germany or whatever. And then Americans would get angry and sanction Russia, do you seriously think Europeans would defend the country and the “market”?
No. EU would drop Russia like hot potato, but now Russia would be fully deindustrialized and exposed and ruined.
It would be 90s all over again. I don’t think its a good idea. Russian Rosatom, strategically, is worth more than all of Poland put together. Losing that for a few points of GDP growth, and then total annihilation later, not good.
Those who think that I am Swedish but either have an Indian wife or mixed Indian blood.
Neither of these are correct, but what’s amazing to me is how much energy and effort is put into this pointless quest. Is this the reason why lurid conspiracy theories are so popular? The truth is just too mundane and boring? I also don’t see myself as particularly interesting, which makes this long debate even more bizarre. If I wanted this to go on, I’d keep you guessing but I’ve already categorically stated the truth.
Or maybe they think that since their deals are government-t0-government, having a good-looking website for the foreign public to see is not an important project
This is the reason.
I imagine that military purchasers are probably not googling “jets to buy.” From what I’ve known, there’s usually some project to “revamp website” but it gets pushed to the wayside and never gets done for years at least.
It seems that people here find his (ecological nationalist) views on other topics to be controversial
I reject nationalism. I used consider myself to be an ecological feminist, but I now realise that feminism is too reactionary as it merely seeks equality and that too through iterative methods of education, which has had dubious successess in the past.
I now favour a gradual cull of manoids to about ~20% of the population which would greatly reduce human conflict. This cull would be done at the womb through sex-selective embryos. Rightoids claim that some races are more responsible for violence than others: this is true (but complicated by reasons of poverty and SES background). What they don’t tell you is that manoids are responsible for the vast supermajority of violence in all societies.
This is likely a genetic impulse which cannot be ‘educated’ away. A 80/20 society would have some amount of problems, but the historical record seems clear that polygamy is easier for women to accept/understand than for manoids. Once genetic engineering gets advanced enough, we could go back to a 50/50 ratio but only on account of an iron-clad guarantee that manoids’ violent impulses be purged from their DNA. Absent this, a 80/20 ratio would become a necessity for the foreseeable future.
Greek Phanariotes were literally Ottoman favorites that they put in the place of Serb Patriarchs because they led the Serb people into rebellions and exiles from South Serbia, that is, North-Albania, Vardar Macedonia and Kosovo-Metohija. The Serbian Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire from the 17th to 19th centuries was practically controlled by Greek Phanariotes because Serb Patriarchs were considered too disobedient and unreliable to Ottoman authorities. Same for other Orthodox Churches (e.g. Bulgarian and maybe Romanian) I believe. Similar thing applies to controlling trade and commerce throughout much of the Ottoman Balkans …
Regarding the Greek Revolution, I don’t think you’d want me to ask where the hell where the Greeks and Phanariotes during the 1st and 2nd Serbian Uprisings (in reality way more Serb rebellions against the Ottomans, but these two are commonly referred to as such) from 1804-1813 and 1815-1817. Especially when the Ottoman Empire crushed the 1st Serbian Uprising from 1813-1815 by deliberately killing 100,000 Serbs (rebel soldiers, but mostly civilians, sacked and burned villages, impalement on pikes, beheadings, and many other unpleasant things) for their attempt at rebellion, with hundreds of thousands of Serbs having fled across the Danube to the Habsburg Empire yet again. This would ultimately trigger Hadzi Prodan’s failed revolt, but more importantly, the somewhat successful 2nd Serbian Uprising after it.
Greeks were actually a hindrance to “Balkan Slavs” (Serbs and Bulgarians really, the Muslim ones were obviously fanatically pro-Ottoman) until 1821. Not to mention the failed Phanariote led revolutions/rebellions in Wallachia/Romania in 1821. There’s also the effort by Phanariotes to try and reform the Ottoman Empire to be an equal Greek-Turkish/Orthodox-Muslim union, although I’m not sure what went on with that besides the fact that nothing came of it for certain reasons I don’t really know.
Still, I think it’s historically noteworthy that Karadjordje Petrovic himself was closely tied to the Greek Revolutionary society Filiki Eteria, and in hindsight would’ve been better off going to fight with the Greeks in 1821 instead of returning to the Principality of Serbia after 1817, only to be executed by Milos Obrenovic in order to appease and successfully negotiate with the Ottoman Empire for slow, but gradual improvements and upgrades in the autonomy and status of the Principality of Serbia (possible mostly because of Russian support combined with Milos Obrenovic’s skilled diplomacy).
Polish Perspective=Thulean Friend? No way. You can’t think clearly, Dmitry. I am disappointed because I have observed a certain amount of growth and maturation in your posts. What possibly could have contribute to your confusion apart from your dislike of PP for his comments on Israel is that PP was probably not Polish Polish but most likely raised abroad, possibly in UK or South Africa with Polish father or mother but not both. His white racialist nationalism with links to Swedish WNs and South Africa and absence of Catholicism in his comments was very atypical for anybody from Poland. His strength was economy and his weakness was economy because he treated it literally with no room for subterranean hidden influences which are not covered in textbooks. This made me think that economics/investment was his occupation or major.
Aaronb similarly switched his views compared to what they were a few years ago.
I am not convinced. He kept his Judaism and Zionism in check but at some point he no longer could take all the anti-Jewish abuse going on here, particularly from Ron Unz so he went with his Jewish supremacist gaslighting trolling as an act of defiance that only on the surface was at odds with his previous gaslighting trolling extolling oriental culture and philosophy. Then after some hiatus necessitated by the outpour of hostility towards him and after an alleged trip to China he became a big China skeptic and began to use the arguments from the IQists’ that he used to deride that China was lacking creativity and so on. But his MO is the same: gaslighting that there is something better than you and your white European and American culture that is doomed.
https://www.unz.com/article/should-we-compete-with-china-can-we/?showcomments#comment-3510557
Historically, activist-types like (((AaronB)) have spent all their time and effort harshly critiquing white Gentile society. But since that traditional target has now largely been destroyed and the Han Chinese are doing so well these days, the latter have naturally become the new target.
However, since the Chinese weren’t idiotic enough to allow (((AaronB))) and his (((friends))) to gain control over their media and financial systems, I doubt they really have much to worry about…although the foolish Hongkongers have not been so lucky…
I must admit that I am impressed with AaronB. I am really amazed that creatures like him exist. I do not think he is trolling as an assignment. No, this is his nature and his way he relates and communicates. He is hostile to the traditional European culture. He is proud that it has been conquered and Judaized. And he takes pleasure from observing confusion, squirming, impotence and futility among the WNs whom he knows are traditional enemy of his people.
Women & men trad live seperately.
Brothers one house, wives another.
At least Mongol man and wife couples have lived in a shared yurt/гэр for thousand years.
White fragility functions as a form of bullying; I am going to make it so miserable for you to confront me—no matter how diplomatically you try to do so—that you will simply back off, give up, and never raise the issue again. White fragility keeps people of color in line and “in their place.”
Projections much? Its like she is describing leftist position towards the opposing viewpoints.
I had some respect for you before but after your promotion of such bullshit, I have no more respect.
Speaking of this rugby union game – I briefly saw some of this Australia v Argentina rugby union game on TV the other night .
Now like the vast majority of Australians I have very little interest in this sport ( I was raised on Australian Rules ) but I was rather surprised at how non white the Australian team was .It seemed to have happened almost overnight
I expressed an opinion to family that I’d prefer the Argentineans to win as I’d rather socialise with them as they all looked , well, middle class polite types as opposed to Pacific Islander thugs whom one will always try to avoid whenever possible .
A discussion ensued .
Some but not all understood my position .
I’m a Taoist, quasi-anarchist, and naturalist. I dont like authoritarian systems, whether they are Chinese, White gentile, or Jewish. If Jewish authoritarianism was extolled on this site, as Chinese is, I would criticize it harshly.
On this site, there is a truly sinister and blind promotion of Chinese authoritarianism, which I fight, and a shameful sycophancy towards numbers and size, and an attempt to exploit discontent with the fact that developed economies have hit a natural wall by trying to promote a return to the serf-like conditions of developing economies as an improvement, instead of finally doing the right thing and distributing the benefits of automation fairly among all sectors of society and not just the rich. This cynical ploy by millionaires like Ron is lapped up by low IQ alt right types, who are taught to believe that Chinese elites ruthlessly exploiting their serfs in factories while new billionaires are created daily and inequality soares is “nationalism” and “caring for their people” .
And please note – I do not use the IQist argument that Chinese are not creative, but say Chinese authoritarianism is suppressing the innate creativity of the Chinese.
As a Taoist, I am also hostile to excessive technology and excessive rationalism, whether they are found in Chinese society or White gentile society or Jewish society. I have criticized Jewish rationalism and legalism on this site, and expressed sympathy for mysticism.
I have supported certain strands of Westerm culture, notably Romanticism and French humanism (so called) as found in writers like Montaigne and the skeptical tradition of the French moralistes. I have also expressed enthusiastic admiration for the Greek Pyrhhonians. I have also expressed admiration for European art and architecture. I have also expressed qualified admiration for Catholicism and Orthodoxy, while noting their Manichean tendencies.
I have opposed the Enlightenment, scientism, and positivism. As a Taoist, I oppose the Promethean impulse as based on a mistake, and the manichean philosophy that underlies Christianity. At the same time, I’ve admitted it has led to the unsurpassed glory of European history.
My view is too nuanced and dialectical for you to understand, because you are a Manichean thinker who does not see gray but only good and evil. I even say the CCP may have a positive role to play in China’s development, as much as I think ultimately it must be overcome ultimately.
But Manichean thinkers are constitutionally incapable of understanding dialectical thinkers. So I leave you to the consolations of your conspiracy theories, such as they are.
You really are trying too hard, Cholas didnt conquer anything in Southeast Asia, but they made Srivijaya weaker, which later helped the rise of young Muslim Malay sultanates.
Also the Southeast Asia was already thoroughly culturally Indianized, all lands of Southeast except Northern Vietnam, had Indian derived scripts, dances, rudimentary caste system, revered Ramayana and Mahabharata, were religiously Buddhist or Hindu, or mix of both, even the far flung Philippines were culturally under a strong Indian influence. No offence towards Chinese, but Chinese have historically lacked cultural soft power, only those areas which couldnt import their culture elsewhere, imported culture from China, or those lands which were conquered by the China. So Japan, Korea and Northern Vietnam were only areas 500 years ago that were culturally sinified and outside of direct Chinese rule, even South-Central Vietnam ruled by Champas was thoroughly Indianized and Sanskritized society, with a caste system and Hinduism.
Even Mongols have hugely absorbed Indian culture, but very little of Chinese, I dont know why things are so? Maybe because the Chinese writing system was much more complicated than the syllable based Indic ones?
Malay Peninsula – Buddhist majority
Sumatra – Buddhist majority, with a large Hindu minority
Borneo – Hindu majority
Java – maybe slight Hindu majority, with a large Buddhist minority
Siam- Buddhist majority
Burma – Buddhist majority
Cambodia, in old times southern Vietnam or Cochinchina was part of Cambodia – Hindu majority
Champa – Hindu majority
Philippines – mixed, maybe a Hindu majority
Even Yunnan in Southeast China was a mix of Indian and Chinese culture before their conquest by the Ming
Tibet – their culture is practically a continuation of Medieval Indian Buddhist society, before the Islamic invasions
Okay Manchus derived some of their cultural practices from three sources, from Mongols, from their native traditions and from the Chinese, still their emperors were followers of Tibetan Buddhism, though some politicized revisionists claim that they were only Buddhists for political reasons, if it was so then its quite strange that Kangxi and Qianlong, the greatest emperors of Qing, wrote thousands of copies of Buddhist sutras, didnt demand prostration from high lamas, which is quite verboten in traditional chinese concept of emperor as the highest on earth and Qianglong even bowed or made prostrations to his guru the Lama Rolpay Dorje in private ceremonies! I think that Kangxi also bowed to the lama Zanabazar, but about that Im not 100% sure.
But Chinese had a higher state of technological development, at least during the Song, Ming and Qing,, maybe even during the Tang, they were a great source of inventions and innovations.
Therefore people should not say that one is substantially better than another, for one has been more preoccupied with the momentary or conventional problems and another more with the existential problems.
Though he who has humility, or is humble towards the truth and id eager to learn, is always superior! Which is something that progressives and квасной патриотs dont have.
Ps. Shaivism was the preferred form of Hinduism in Southeast Asia, which is understandable, after all they are closest to the Buddhism among the Hindu sects or faiths….
Joseph Wu says Beijing is seeking to expand its ‘authoritarian order’ and calls for ‘like-minded’ nations to act together to protect Taiwan
The international community must join together in resisting China’s expansionism and preventing an invasion of Taiwan by sharing intelligence, rethinking Chinese business ties and boosting Taipei’s presence on the world stage, Taiwan’s foreign minister has said.
Also, supposedly (((I))) am deconstructing traditional White gentile society, yet the things I oppose most strongly are the Enlightenment, scientism, and positivism, which are modern reactions against tradition, and which are precisely the acid that dissolved traditional White gentile society.
While I oppose these trends wholeheartedly, I have expressed qualified admiration for Christianity, and frequently use Jesus to illustrate values I admire, while opposing primarily the manichean element in Christianity. I have also praised traditional art.
When it comes to China, I am precisely promoting a return to its traditional Taoist culture, and oppose the ways it has adopted the above mentioned trends from the West. So how am (((I))) trying to deconstruct the traditional culture of China?
Poland creates quite a bit of media while Hungary doesn’t at the same level of GDP/capita
I always thought it was linked to economies of scale. Fewer media is produced for the Hungarian market than the four times larger Polish market, and the things that get produced are in general of poorer quality, so even less visible abroad.
That said, Hungary won more Oscars for best foreign movies than Poland (two vs. one, though one of the Hungarian Oscars was won by a Holocaust movie, so some might disregard it), and I believe has more nominations, certainly on a per capita basis.
Have you ever dealt with Anglo whites?
Do you believe enlightenment liberalism is universal & objective?
I never had any respect for you, you’re a white larper acting as if you’re an authority Dharma.
Imagine, a gora buddha giving advice on Kshatra
You’re fundamentally, in a conflict of interest..
Don’t act as if your white skin being attacked isn’t the reason you find it “bullshit”
The languages of the UN are 4/6 European + Arabic/Chinese
White supremacy shapes the world, and takes it away from seeing Maya as an illusion.
Its defeat will lead to Good things, you’re either anti-White or anti-Dharma||
I know you won’t understand what I mean by “White” or anything else, since ESL.
Have you ever dealt with Anglo whites?
Do you believe enlightenment liberalism is universal & objective?
You are throwing baby out with the bathwater. I despise the Anglo civilization, and desire its fall, I spit on their enlightenment and liberal values, but its not like Russians, Germans, Italians or small people like Finns or Serbs are at fault. In my understanding all Europeans are white, not just Anglos.
I never had any respect for you, you’re a white larper acting as if you’re an authority Dharma.
Imagine, a gora buddha giving advice on Kshatra
I was born to a Buddhist mother, how its larping in such situation? And Im more Kshatriya than you are, I have served in the army, have you? Mongols were traditionally classified as Kshatriyas in Buddhist texts, so at least I have served in the army and I have Kshatriya blood, but thats not all, Three of four of my great grandfathers fought in the second world war, Im not sure about the fourth, maybe. So who is larping as Kshatriya and who really is? How many of your relatives have fought in a war?
This is what Buddha criticized, people are what they do, not what their heritage is, so okay you guys established one Pakistani size empire for a relatively short time, served as sepoys for the British and now woohoo you are the martial master race of the whole earth for eternity?
The languages of the UN are 4/6 European + Arabic/Chinese
Yes Sanskrit should be on the list, or at least Hindi
Mongols were traditionally classified as Kshatriyas in Buddhist texts
Shameful mistake from me, some travelling Indian monks categorised people of steppes as members of Kshatriya class, meaning Sakas, Mongols etc. Its not like there is Buddhist scriptures which claim so.
But Mughal is the Persian name for the Mongols, and I very much believe that Mughals were more of Kshatriya.
Here is the couple portraits of Babur the founder of Mughal Empire, who still had quite much Mongol blood, before Mughals mixed with the Indians.
But Ha haa there is a Jain text, Sanskrit Hammīra-Mahākāvya, where the Mongolian warrior Mahimashahi, is the embodiment of the warrior’s duty, and he serves as an example for others on how to become Rajput. He fights with the Rajputs against the Muslim Turks and even burns wives in Jauhar. So it seems that ancient Rajputs acknowledged Mongols as Kshatriyas!
No one is disputing the Kshyatriyaness of the Rajputs, those guys are the very epitome of being of a Kshatriya.
The Phanariotes were not Ottoman favourites but very clever. There was never any chance Serb patriarchs were to be appointed as the grand prize for the Ottomans was the Roman empire (Byzantium) – even what was left it. And the people who controlled ecclesiastical organ of that empire were the Romioi (Greeks). Therefore, the obvious choice were the Greek patriarchs. Serb rebellions played no role (it is more accurate to call them localised revolts) as there were many Greek revolts too but that did not stop the Ottomans appointing Greek prelates. The fact that Greek patriarchs controlled the Slavic churches should be admired for the cleverness of the Phanariotes. Unfortunately, the Greek mistake was not converting most of those Slavs fully to Hellenic culture. The job was only partially completed with their conversion to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
The Serbian uprisings were simply localised revolts and not national in character, and the Serbs (whom I admire) were not able to exploit the international situation as cleverly as the Greeks a few years later. For example, the Greeks based their Revolution on Enlightenment values to appeal to the young men agitating all over Europe i.e. as soon as they largely cleared the Peloponnese of the Ottoman scourge, they created a constitution, senate, executive and a kind of parliament which made them respectable in the eyes of Europeans. This did not happen in the Serbian case. However, they also sidelined the more radical Jacobin Revolutionaries that scared the conservative powers such as Britain and Russia. The Greeks also had an advantage in exploiting the growing Philhellenism of western Europeans. This was a tool that was never available to the Serbs.
The effort by Phanariotes to try and reform the Ottoman Empire to be an equal Greek-Turkish/Orthodox-Muslim union was really only a minority movement and never gained much favour from the leaders of the Revolution.
Please do not take the above as slight on Serbs. Greeks and Serbs and have long history of fighting the same enemies and have a strong mutual appreciation. However, the Greeks have generally been better at reading the external situation (although not always like in 1919-1922) and they used to have the additional tool of Philhellenism at their disposal. Given most of Europe’s youth is now enthralled with Afro-Islamic culture and knowledge of the classics means Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa rather than Thucydides of Plato then this tool is now useless.
The Phanariotes were not Ottoman favourites but very clever. There was never any chance Serb patriarchs were to be appointed as the grand prize for the Ottomans was the Roman empire (Byzantium) – even what was left it. And the people who controlled ecclesiastical organ of that empire were the Romioi (Greeks). Therefore, the obvious choice were the Greek patriarchs. Serb rebellions played no role (it is more accurate to call them localised revolts) as there were many Greek revolts too but that did not stop the Ottomans appointing Greek prelates. The fact that Greek patriarchs controlled the Slavic churches should be admired for the cleverness of the Phanariotes. Unfortunately, the Greek mistake was not converting most of those Slavs fully to Hellenic culture. The job was only partially completed with their conversion to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
The Serbian uprisings were simply localised revolts and not national in character, and the Serbs (whom I admire) were not able to exploit the international situation as cleverly as the Greeks a few years later. For example, the Greeks based their Revolution on Enlightenment values to appeal to the young men agitating all over Europe i.e. as soon as they largely cleared the Peloponese of the Ottoman scourge, they created a constitution, senate, executive and a kind of parliament which made them respectable in the eyes of Europeans. This did not happen in the Serbian case. However, they also sidelined the more radical Jacobin Revolutionaries that scared the conservative powers such as Britain and Russia. The Greeks also had an advantage in exploiting the growing Philhellenism of western Europeans. This was a tool that was never available to the Serbs.
The effort by Phanariotes to try and reform the Ottoman Empire to be an equal Greek-Turkish/Orthodox-Muslim union was really only a minority movement and never gained much favour from the leaders of the Revolution.
Please do not take the above as slight on Serbs. Greeks and Serbs and have long history of fighting the same enemies and have a strong mutual appreciation. However, the Greeks have generally been better at reading the external situation (although not always like in 1919-1922) and they used to have the additional tool of Philhellenism at their disposal. Given most of Europe’s youth is now enthralled with Afro-Islamic culture and knowledge of the classics means Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa rather than Thucydides of Plato then this tool is now useless.
The Phanariotes were not Ottoman favourites but very clever. There was never any chance Serb patriarchs were to be appointed as the grand prize for the Ottomans was the Roman empire (Byzantium) – even what was left it. And the people who controlled ecclesiastical organ of that empire were the Romioi (Greeks). Therefore, the obvious choice were the Greek patriarchs. Serb rebellions played no role (it is more accurate to call them localised revolts) as there were many Greek revolts too but that did not stop the Ottomans appointing Greek prelates. The fact that Greek patriarchs controlled the Slavic churches should be admired for the cleverness of the Phanariotes. Unfortunately, the Greek mistake was not converting most of those Slavs fully to Hellenic culture. The job was only partially completed with their conversion to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
The Serbian uprisings were simply localised revolts and not national in character, and the Serbs (whom I admire) were not able to exploit the international situation as cleverly as the Greeks a few years later. For example, the Greeks based their Revolution on Enlightenment values to appeal to the young men agitating all over Europe i.e. as soon as they largely cleared the Peloponese of the Ottoman scourge, they created a constitution, senate, executive and a kind of parliament which made them respectable in the eyes of Europeans. This did not happen in the Serbian case. However, they also sidelined the more radical Jacobin Revolutionaries that scared the conservative powers such as Britain and Russia. The Greeks also had an advantage in exploiting the growing Philhellenism of western Europeans. This was a tool that was never available to the Serbs.
The effort by Phanariotes to try and reform the Ottoman Empire to be an equal Greek-Turkish/Orthodox-Muslim union was really only a minority movement and never gained much favour from the leaders of the Revolution.
Please do not take the above as slight on Serbs. Greeks and Serbs and have long history of fighting the same enemies and have a strong mutual appreciation. However, the Greeks have generally been better at reading the external situation (although not always like in 1919-1922) and they used to have the additional tool of Philhellenism at their disposal. Given most of Europe’s youth is now enthralled with Afro-Islamic culture and knowledge of the classics means Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa rather than Thucydides of Plato then this tool is now useless.
Oof, the rabid nationalism of small nations, I’ve heard enough of my own variants of this, it’s all so tiresome.
Eventually ordinary people get so sick of what feels like omnipresent and played-up fanaticism it allows traitors like Pashinyan to (briefly) look almost attractive in comparison. If anyone cares, the bastard still hasn’t resigned, if anyone was wondering, although more scandals and leaks are coming out from his cabinet everyday.
The Phanariotes were not Ottoman favourites but very clever.
This sounds like a cope to justify Greek Phanariote collaboration with the Ottoman Empire in exploiting Christian Slavic populations, no offense. I believe that some Phanariotes had semi-Jewish ties/connections (mostly the merchant/non-Church ones), so they weren’t 100% Greek.
There was never any chance Serb patriarchs were to be appointed as the grand prize for the Ottomans was the Roman empire (Byzantium) – even what was left it.
From here on, you’re just betraying your ignorance of Serb history.
This statement is factually wrong because there where a whole bunch of Serb Patriarchs who were appointed with the approval of the Ottoman Empire, to lead the Serb population and help in managing the affairs of Serbs in the Ottoman Empire.
These 3 guys are the most famous Patriarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church approved by the Ottoman Empire (there are many others).
Serb rebellions played no role (it is more accurate to call them localised revolts) as there were many Greek revolts too but that did not stop the Ottomans appointing Greek prelates.
If Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III was so happy with his Serb subjects, why abolish the Serbian Patriarchate of Pec in the 18th century and hand over most of its administration to Greek Phanariotes?
Because the Serbs were constantly loyal and faithful subjects of the Ottoman Empire?
Unfortunately, the Greek mistake was not converting most of those Slavs fully to Hellenic culture. The job was only partially completed with their conversion to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
LOL
Is this the Greek equivalent of Jewish Chutzpah (racially inferior Slav goyim!)?
Greeks have always betrayed an attitude of racial and ethnic contempt for Slavs. Most of it is saved for Monkeydonians, then Bulgarians, although I don’t judge because I haven’t seen Greeks speak of Serbs in such a way.
The Serbian uprisings were simply localised revolts and not national in character
According to you, no other Christian nation besides Greeks existed before the 19th century in the Ottoman Empire. You’re just copying Western Liberals in your approach to nationalism, nationhood and ethnicity by claiming that those are all artificial 18th/19th century constructs, similar to AP.
There is a large amount of objective primary sources I can cite which debunk your claim that there was “nothing national in character” about “Serb localised revolts”. Also, doesn’t the fact that they’re localized in certain regions (in which ethnic Serbs lived, and rightfully belong to them of course) tell you that in fact those were Serb national/ethnic revolts?
the Serbs (whom I admire) were not able to exploit the international situation as cleverly as the Greeks a few years later.
Admirations aside, you clearly don’t know much of anything about the 1st Serbian Uprising at all.
The 1st Serbian Uprising was triggered by the abuse and excesses of the Janissary class in the Sumadjia region/Pashalik of Belgrade against Serbs. The “Сеча Кнезова” or the “Slaughter of the Knezes” was the direct cause of the 1st Serbian Uprising. It was literally a popular uprising against being subjected to immediate and arbitrary terror by Janissaries. It then later evolved into a full on-national revolution after Serbs chose to reject Icko’s Peace offer with the Ottoman Empire for autonomy and instead joined Russia in open war against the Ottoman Empire. Possibly a strategic mistake/error in hindsight, among a few others Serbs made in the 1st Serbian Uprising.
(Serbs fought together with Russia on the Balkan Front in that Russo-Turkish War above, but the Wiki link redirects you to the link about the 1st Serbian Uprising).
As for the 2nd Serbian Uprising, it’s clear that Milos Obrenovic’s choice to pursue autonomy under the Ottoman Empire and gradually push for greater sovereignty for Serbia over the years and decades to come was the wise one in hindsight. Although Russia won the Napoleonic Wars, it was hesitant to directly go to war for Serbia’s sake (understandably given the Congress of Vienna and European hostility to Russia) but the possibility of Russia attacking the Ottoman Empire and indirectly backing Serbia was good enough to let Milos Obrenovic take his chances and succeed with skilled diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire.
For example, the Greeks based their Revolution on Enlightenment values to appeal to the young men agitating all over Europe i.e. as soon as they largely cleared the Peloponnese of the Ottoman scourge, they created a constitution, senate, executive and a kind of parliament which made them respectable in the eyes of Europeans. This did not happen in the Serbian case.
Perhaps the geopolitical position and circumstance of Greeks and Serbs was different?
After all, the only great powers that cared about the 1st Serbian Uprising where the Ottomans, Habsburgs and Russia. Serbs chose to side with Russia because it offered them immediate help and support. Although Karadjordje approached the Habsburgs for an offer of Serbia becoming a client state, he was rejected because the Habsburgs were too busy with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. In fact, the greatest reason for the failure of the 1st Serbian Uprising was that Serbs tied their fate to Russia (not that there were other good alternatives) and ultimately became collateral damage in Napoleon’s attack against Russia. Napoleon’s troops from around 1800-1810’s occupied much of modern-day Croatia and there was even a possibility of the French Army going into the Ottoman Empire to attack the Russians in Wallachia/Bulgaria and crush Serbia (the geopolitics was a bit complex, like usual in the Balkans, but Napoleon’s France supported the Ottoman Empire against Russia for most of this war, which was bad for Serbs of course). In 1812, 13 days before Napoleon attacked Russia, The Russian Empire signed the Treaty of Bucharest (1812) and in Article 8 achieved guarantees for the autonomy of Serbia, although these were later fragrantly broken and violated by the Ottoman Empire (not surprising considering the nature of Turks) when Russia couldn’t threaten the Ottomans with military force for their violations …
The Greeks also had an advantage in exploiting the growing Philhellenism of western Europeans. This was a tool that was never available to the Serbs.
You’re confirming my point about the different geo-political situation of Greeks and Serbs.
Please do not take the above as slight on Serbs. Greeks and Serbs and have long history of fighting the same enemies and have a strong mutual appreciation.
I don’t. I also agree about the shared history and mutual bonds. Although facts are facts.
Another unpleasant fact is that the Kingdom of Greece squirmed out of its Treaty obligation to side with Serbia in WW1 in 1914 (understandable due to Greece’s position, but it’s still a fact).
Still, I don’t judge Greeks badly either because of the above fact, Greek Phanariotes, or the fact that Serbs and Greeks fought many wars against each other in the Medieval Ages from the arrival of Serbs in the Balkans around 600 AD (yes, I’ve come to the conclusion this is true despite some Serbs LARPing we are ancient 6000 BC Vinca Sarmatians/Indian tribe/whatever etc) to the 14th century.
More modern positive facts overshadow that for me (and most Serbs of course). E.g. The alliance of Greece and Serbia in the 1st and 2nd Balkan War (against the Ottoman Empire and then Bulgaria), Greece allowing Serbs and the Serbian Army to retreat to Greece in WW1 to continue fighting on the Thessaloniki front in a time of great mortal danger for Serbs despite Greece’s difficult geopolitical position, and Greeks in the 1990’s having massive popular sympathy for the Serb side in the wars of Yugoslavia’s break-up.
The last point was shown clearly by Greek nationalists sending a volunteer unit to fight with the VRS (Army of Republika Srpska) in Bosnia and participate in the capture of Srebrenica in 1995 (LOL, I’ve apparently even heard claims that Greek volunteers participated in the “Srebrenica Genoicde”), Greek families volunteering to care for/adopt Serb refugee children and babies from all over the Former Yugoslavia, and in 1999 Greeks overwhelmingly opposed the NATO bombing with Greek naval captain Marinos Ritsoudis refusing to participate in the NATO aggression, even if it involved only moving a Greek naval ship to enforce the naval blockade over FR Yugoslavia.
However, the Greeks have generally been better at reading the external situation (although not always like in 1919-1922) and they used to have the additional tool of Philhellenism at their disposal.
Not so sure about that. Especially not in the 21st century where Greece is handicapped by its “Euro-Atlantic” ties in effectively resisting Erdogan’s aggressions, while Serbia has a chance (not certain) to stand successfully against NATO and its Balkan proxies with the strength of China-Russia ties. Although we’ll see, I guess.
Literally everything seems rigged against Christian Europeans in this day and age though, especially against small Eastern Christian nations (not that they should indulge themselves in the delusion that they are actually “European”) …
Given most of Europe’s youth is now enthralled with Afro-Islamic culture and knowledge of the classics means Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa rather than Thucydides of Plato then this tool is now useless.
Yamaha’s 30,000 yuan ($4,250) upright pianos make up about 15% of the instruments Yamaha sells in China. “The typical customer is a married couple in their 30s with a monthly income of a little over 10,000 yuan, who are buying the piano for children aged 3 to 5,” said Teruhiko Tsurumi
That’s just silly.
Perhaps it testifies to the immaturity of the Chinese consumer market that such purchases occur. I have a hard time believing that a western middle class family would so carelessly splash out on such an expensive model for a beginner child – who may or may not even enjoy it – when there is no need.
Digital pianos have come a long way and are a perfectly acceptable substitute for acoustic pianos for beginning piano students. The main feature you need to concern yourself with is the key action. Acoustic keys are ‘naturally’ weighted and have a characteristic feel when playing. Digital pianos can simulate this either poorly or well, but nowadays even entry models to a decent job of it. It would be a cinch for western consumers to come across this information. Even the music store sales attendants — who tend to be musicians first and salesmen second – would inform them of this rather than try to offload an acoustic on unsuspecting dupes.
Oof, the rabid nationalism of small nations, I’ve heard enough of my own variants of this, it’s all so tiresome.
lol. Armenian lecturing others about small nation nationalism.
Eventually ordinary people get so sick of what feels like omnipresent and played-up fanaticism it allows traitors like Pashinyan to (briefly) look almost attractive in comparison.
Well that’s why “ordinary people” get what they deserve at the end of the day. Their national enemies eventually come after them, attack them, take their land, commit a whole bunch of crimes and atrocities against their nation, and force them out from their living space.
If anyone cares, the bastard still hasn’t resigned, if anyone was wondering, although more scandals and leaks are coming out from his cabinet everyday.
I decided to follow internal Armenian politics from what seems to be a good English language Armenian source (I actually think it’s so good that ideally there would be a Serb equivalent, especially the spirit, refinement and nuance with which they write).
It seems like I’ve underestimated just how bad Nikol Pashinyan is for Armenians and Armenia (it makes Serbia’s internal politics under Vucic look good):
I think a description from the Turkish Daily Sabah (yes, I bothered to read them a bit because it serves as a good reflection of Turko-Muslim opinion, especially interesting is everything they write to do with Israel), about Nikol Pashinyan’s Armenia, is that “Armenia is working against its own existence”.
Srivijaya’s official religion was Buddhist, not Hindu, which made them weaker (no offence). They had Hindu elements within them, but this was not state policy.
Secondly, even many ‘Hindu’ traditions were amalgations of local tribal customs. If you ever visit India, you can see some of these similarities in places like Assam where there are shades of Hinduism mixed with a lot vernacular traditions among adivasis and others. All of this meant a weaker core.
It is important to underline that what passed for ‘Hinduism’ in SEA wasn’t the real deal and often a syncretic mix compared to back home. Furthermore, this cultural influence was not as strong as you assume, especially if you went further inland.
The Cholas suffered from none of these things, which is why if their success in thoroughly saffronising SEA would have succeeded, there would be a much deeper immune system to moslems later on.
P.S. you should read this in relation to our previous debate.
“I believe that some Phanariotes had semi-Jewish ties/connections (mostly the merchant/non-Church ones), so they weren’t 100% Greek.”
I’d be really interested if you could provide some credible documentation that might help to back up this belief. Not sure why cleverness in political and business dealings is synonymous with Jewishness. I would say it is simply function of operating a long-standing empire.
With all due respect, there was no way the Ottoman would have handed over control of the Orthodox population to Serbian clerics. Note, Serbs were situated at the north-western part of the empire whereas Greeks were spread across Asia Minor, Greece and concentrated in Constantinople. This gave the Ottomans are ready-made resource spread across the Orthodox millet. Also, Greek was the prestige language of Christianity, not Serbian. An Orthodox cleric in Syria or Greece or Albania would have had a working knowledge of Greek even if they were not ethnically Greek. However, the Serbian language did not have that status.
“According to you, no other Christian nation besides Greeks existed before the 19th century in the Ottoman Empire.”
I never made that claim. I made a specific claim about the character of the revolts.
“Perhaps the geopolitical position and circumstance of Greeks and Serbs was different?”
Of course. Also, the social structure of each nation differed. Greece had a very important merchant class that was spread across Europe and could link into sources of financial support. The Serbs were largely an agricultural people at that time.
I would not be so sure which side it is better to be on, Euro-Atlantic or Russia. I am not always happy with the EU, NATO and the Americans but do not underestimate Russia’s weakness to project power beyond its border. Just witness how they recently let Turks overunn an ancient Christian land.
Of course it is unjust–but policymakers actually have no choice.
If they gave all the free money to the poor, then the poor would spend it and the velocity of money would explode.
Then we would have off the charts inflation that would be impossible to hide.
I don’t have a very firm opinion on this, but some people might be unaware that the issue is too low inflation, and has been since 2008. The stated goal of the cheap money policies is to accelerate inflation. So giving some money to the poor would actually make some sense.
Those more receptive to bullshit are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.
Either intentionally or otherwise, you have a fondness for promoting less effective things that would almost certainly lead directly to worse lives for those involved here, while claiming that it is the “true nature of things.” Its really not an uncommon manipulation tactic, and it shouldn’t be surprising that you keep getting called on it.
There’s probably a very real component of economy of scale there so I’m glad to concede on that. My main point was to remove the direct association with GDP per capita to soft power, which is a very flawed ratio to consider.
If you need a study to validate your narrow mindedness, then do what makes you happy.
Please realize, too, that “effectiveness” is not actually a value – it presupposes a value. My values are quite different than yours, so what effectively promotes my values is not what effectively promotes your values.
The idea that “effectiveness” can substitute for values and be worshipped on its own, is one of the weirder ideas to have emerged in modernity. A strange God indeed.
It is based, of course, on the mistake that all humans share all values and the same vision of the good life, and the only question, then, is why some societies better achieve the values of modern technological society, which humans universally desire, it is assumed. The question becomes merely one of technique, and societies which fail to achieve the full modern vision, are judged incapable, not indifferent.
It is beyond the scope of modernity, to self-reflect – meta-reflect, if you will – and question its assumption that its values are universally shared. To be fair, this blind cultural narcissism lies at the heart of all universalizing systems.
Finally, if people want to “call me out”, they are welcome- I enjoy being showed where I am wrong. But they have an obligation to construct a minimally coherent critique. Utu failed in that.
On teh interwebz, one always needs to allow for irony, sarcasm and the possibility of people enjoying bullshit for its counter-intuitive/counter-probabilistic or aesthetic quality. Here’s the most profound statement about the “true nature of things” I’ve read lately:
Halloween and Christmas are essentially one and the same thing, because OCT 31 = DEC 25 = BIN 11001.
Srivijaya’s official religion was Buddhist, not Hindu, which made them weaker (no offence). They had Hindu elements within them, but this was not state policy.
Nonsense Buddhist societies are not less or more aggressive than Hindu ones. Not in the old times, or in modern times, actually Hindus are often more tolerant towards their Muslims minorities than Buddhists are.
Secondly, even many ‘Hindu’ traditions were amalgations of local tribal customs. If you ever visit India, you can see some of these similarities in places like Assam where there are shades of Hinduism mixed with a lot vernacular traditions among adivasis and others. All of this meant a weaker core.
I mostly agree on this, still the culture of the elites in the Southeast Asia was highly Indianized, and its not like Cholas themselves were free from local influences that predated Hinduism, there was much less of Sankritization than in neighbouring lands, anyone who has travelled in Southern India knows that the local Hinduism is quite peculiar and different from the Hinduism of North and Central India. They even have lots of gods that are just worshipped in the south and many strange local cults, so again situation is more similar to Assam, especially when speaking of Tamils, their culture and religion is quite indigenous, even Keralites have lost much of their Dravidian culture in comparison.
It is important to underline that what passed for ‘Hinduism’ in SEA wasn’t the real deal and often a syncretic mix compared to back home. Furthermore, this cultural influence was not as strong as you assume, especially if you went further inland.
So Hindudharma is flexible like Buddhadharma with the local traditions, if you dont know this then you probably are not an Indian.
So I dont at all agree with this point that limited Sanskritization or Indianization of society made them weaker.
Tamils had their ancient literature and religious traditions from the Sangam period, which had independent and separate development from the Vedic culture, later Chola period was synthesis of traditional Tamil culture with the northern more Vedic influences. Southeast Asia had undergone a slow cultural Indianization from the beginning of the western calendar, lands like Burma probably even before that. Half or more of the words in the Malay and Indonesian language are derived from Sanskrit, I am not sure about Tamil but I think it may have as many loanwords from Sanskrit or less, but not more.
Dravidian states still couldnt beat small invading Muslim armies, the true liberators of India were foremostly Marathas and then the Sikhs, and both are from the Indo-Aryan stock. But I have sympathy for Dravidians, Buddhism endured in their lands much, much longer than in the north and two out of the five major classical Tamil epics were written by Tamil Buddhists.
Also both Buddhism and Hindudharma are as weak or strong before the Islam, Siamese and Arakanese didnt have problems like the Malays, who were politically very fragmented and decentralised, maybe one reason among many why mobile religion like Islam suited for Malays.
Buddhists and Hindus are brothers, real brothers, I dont know how these strange internet Indians think, but in India relations between Hindus and Buddhists are universally amicable. There is genuine solidarity between our faiths, which sadly is not possible with the universalistic Abrahamic faiths.
Reddit can be so frustrating–in some sub-reddits there may be one hundred idiots for each expert.
It is particularly irritating when the true experts get downvoted by the idiots.
But–I agree that the few experts can be totally amazing–they have taught me more about some of my favorite hobbies than I could have learned anywhere else.
In some countries the public has a say in what they are buying. Though admittedly not all that many countries, and even fewer are potential customers of either China or Russia.
I completely agree with you. I, too, think that you used to be an ecological feminist, but that now you have become more radical. I also think that now you support the culling of male embryos to achieve an 80/20 female/male ratio.
A 80/20 society would have some amount of problems, but the historical record seems clear that polygamy is easier for women to accept/understand than for manoids
You do not need genetic engineering for that, you only need One World Government to solve the problems of sexed sperm for humanity.
How could the public be expected to have a good judgment on the specs of a military item, which are likely partly classified even in a well designed public advertisement?
You yourself are the biggest manichean thinker here.
You see a black and white world where you are either living in a total dictatorship (bad) or in total anarchy (good).
As someone who appreciates Taoism and is a libertarian I think this is ridiculous and totally synthetic.
Its more likely that you are threatened by Chinas rise and don’t like where you see yourself in this future compared to one where China is poor and backwards.
You are the worst kind of liberal. You try to pretend you are sympathetic or trying to help a country, when you are really trying your hardest to keep them down.
How come you always get so defensive about China but at the same time claim to not be Chinese? You claim to be “Asian-American” but I have never seen any non-Chinese Mongoloid Asians so supportive of China.
I honestly thought Dmitry was jewish. If he is Indian, it also explains it.
You don’t need these hypotheses. He/she/it is just a libtard. Libtards always destroy the countries where they gain traction: just look at the US “democrats” or EU cucks.
Some people here say Chinese elites care about their serfs, because they don’t seek to replace them with foreign serfs.
I am beginning to think this is correct. But then Chinese serfs, have been loyal to Chinese elites, and are willing to be properly docile and hard working serfs. Have American serfs?
American serfs want to have a friendly elite that keeps their ethnic majority intact, but have American serfs displayed anything like the submissive, docile loyalty and willingness to sacrifice their own lives for the elites, that the Chinese serfs have? No, American serfs are entitled and demanding – they demand this thing called “rights”, this thing called “dignity”, and actually expect non-dangerous working conditions – they demand a work/life balance and are unwilling to sacrifice their best years to enrich American elites.
Feudalism is a reciprocal relationship. If the serfs are not docile, submissive, and loyal, how can the elites be loyal?
Obviously the American elites have to import better serfs! A new strategy being adopted by the American elites seems also to be to convince American serfs to be more like Chinese serfs. Look how good the Chinese have it! Their living standards are rising. Yours are merely at an already high level. Wouldn’t you rather be rising? You too can be rising , if only you become good self sacrificing serfs like China has.
This incidentally is also proof that Thulean Friend is actually Indian because:
“Thule” was referred to by Helena Blavatsky, a mystic with contact to the Secret Masters beneath the Earth, which eventually produced contact with the Indian “World Teacher” Jiddu Krishnamurti who is said to have provided secret teachings only to the elected individuals of the world(likely Indians).
It is known that through these telepathic journeys that the Theosophical Society often used pseudonyms, and the “farthest North” can also be understood as the “Deepest Underground,” which is a reference to Vril, the people of Hollow Earth. “Thule” is “farthest North”, and therefore Thulean reveals himself as a “friend” of the “farthest North” of “Vril.”
The Vril are actually the “Coming Race”, who have long practiced their arts in secret and were defeated only by the principles of the stars that have led to our Evolian fallen age of Kali Yuga(Dark Age). Evola has said that it is the principle of femininity to serve, and in order to become who we truly are, ergo servants, we must become more female.
We further know this is true because the Vedas have spoken of space travel, but this is to be understood as astral travels into the Inner Universe of humanity and the lost knowledge of the Ages aided by powerful all-natural plant-based gluten-free mystic tools.
With their return, they will hold sway and we have to prepare for them by arranging our society in a properly aesthetic and ordered way so that we can be more easily reprocessed into maximally efficient food partners. By this, we can transform into a greater being of order(after digestion in their guts).
Hindus are often more tolerant towards their Muslims minorities than Buddhists are.
If that were the case, then what happened to the Central Asian buddhists? All gone. Most of East Asia was shielded because India took the hits for it.
So I dont at all agree with this point that limited Sanskritization or Indianization of society made them weaker.
History speaks for itself, whether you agree with it or not is immaterial.
Dravidian states still couldnt beat small invading Muslim armies, the true liberators of India were foremostly Marathas and then the Sikhs, and both are from the Indo-Aryan stock.
Your knowledge of western esoterica is commendable, though such knowledge is quite pointless when there are better established and more authentic philosophical and religious traditions to guide us.
Though their believes are somewhat odd, the Theosophists are genuinely nice people, very comfy, Ive often had dealings with them and I have always enjoyed their company.
That said, Hungary won more Oscars for best foreign movies than Poland (two vs. one, though one of the Hungarian Oscars was won by a Holocaust movie, so some might disregard it)
That was a Jewish film (Son of Saul), not a Hungarian one (although to be honest I did quite enjoy the director’s next film set during the AH period).
I am afraid to say that Polish cinema is vastly superior because of Kieslowski (to a lesser extent Wajda). But then I find Bela Tarr unwatchable
If that were the case, then what happened to the Central Asian buddhists? All gone. Most of East Asia was shielded because India took the hits for it.
Afghanistan and Pakistan were mix of Hindus, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, they all became Muslim. In Sogdia, present day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan only a minority were Buddhists, most were Manicheans, Nestorians and especially Zoroastrians. Yes the Buddhist majority Xinjiang was lost, but its much more complicated than what you think. Southern Xinjiang,/Tarim Basin/Altinshahr and Kyrgyzstan was still ruled by the Buddhist Kara-Khitais in the 12th century until they were annihilated by Tengrist Chinggis Khan, the Northern part or Dzungaria was settled by Buddhist Oirat Mongols, but Manchus and eastern Khalkha Mongols annihilated them in the end of the 18th century, they also lost 80% population to last major plague epidemic in human history, after the plague and wars their lands were more or less empty of inhabitants, the Qing invited Kazakhs to former lands of Dzungaria, but there are still about 300-400k Oirat remnants, mostly from Torghut tribe, living in the Northern Xinjiang. There were also other factors, but Im trying to explain this topic shortly.
Now you are just trolling with your “India took the hits for it” -stance. There are multiple times in history when major parts of China has been successfully conquered from the north or northeast, but you need to go quite far in history that some nomad group came through Gansu and succeeded in conquering some parts of China. Even the direction of the conquest in the steppes was almost always from the east to the west. The Xiognu came from the east, Turks came from the east Mongols, yes its somewhat puzzling, but Mongol lands are much harsher than the Kazakh steppe, actually Kazakhstan is pleasant and fruitful land compared to conditions of Mongolia, so maybe that made the ancient inhabitants of Mongolia more martial or something.
Reality is a lot messier than that.
How you can be so insufferable? Indo-Aryan means Indians who speak Indo-European languages, or are from those cultures that speak IE languages, they are noticeably different from the Dravidian peoples of the south both culturally and linguistically.
Last major Dharmic kingdom to fall in Afghanistan was by the way Hindu, they had lots of Buddhist inhabitants but the royalty was Hindu. Kabul Shahis or Hindu Shahis they were called, they ruled the lands of Kabulistan and Gandhara till the beginning of the 11th century, before that mleccha and icchantika Mahmud of Ghazni destroyed them and we lost our holy land of Oddiyana/Urgyen!
I’ve had a youth and many, many years of my life misspent with mostly Western occult traditions, most extensively with Hermeticism(and thus my familiarity with Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie, etc), and while I find it mostly dubious these days, I can’t help but admire the essential beauty in much of it. It also provides a great source of information for “powerful takes.”
Abrahamic colonisation has been the greatest geopolitical crime of the last two thousand years
.
Islamic conquests have been terrible and led to much uglification and cruelty (in this way, Islam is the Communism of pre-modern times). The Islamification of Egypt, Anatolia, Persia, Central Asia, India and Indonesia has been a very sad process. But Christianity has done a great service by replacing the demon worship of the cruel Aztecs and overall despite exceptions has been a positive force.
But why do you think anyone defending China has to be Chinese?
I am against imperialism and against the generalized global homo that the west has become.
A couple years ago it was Russia that was under the microscope and China was on the back of peoples mind.
But I defended Russia back then just like I do with Iran and other countries that are being targeted.
Back then you could post anonymously, but Karlin cucked out and made us take handles to post here. Probably back then you would have pegged me as a Russian spy lol.
You are against imperialism but at the same time claim to be a libertarian and presumably also support mass immigration into White countries of ethnic kinsmen?
The director was Jewish Hungarian (from a Jewish mother and a gentile Hungarian father), the actor playing the protagonist was Jewish (of gentile Hungarian blood, adopted and raised by a Jewish guy as an Orthodox (?) Jew), and most people involved were gentile Hungarians, as well as those providing the money.
It was as Hungarian as Jewish. The topic was mostly Jewish, though, but Hungary fought on the side of Germany, and while nowhere near German levels, there’s been quite a bit of soul searching among some gentile Hungarians about the role Hungarians played back then. I’m pretty sure that this topic is more relevant to Hungarians than it is to Britons or Americans.
It’s a fully Hungarian movie, also made during the communist period, but with lots of soul searching, certainly closer to how the Germans would make a movie about such a topic than some imagined “based V4” country.
The mongols decimated Baghdad and most of modern-day Iran (when they were both moslems) yet neither lost their religion. You are just coping with the lower cultural strength of Buddhism vis-a-vis Hinduism.
Chinese Gobi desert shielded them somewhat, given its huge distance and all the logistical nightmares it entails. The Khyber pass by contrast was easily accessible and almost at a moment’s notice could an invading army get access to vast fertile lands.
Indo-Aryan means Indians who speak Indo-European languages, or are from those cultures that speak IE languages, they are noticeably different from the Dravidian peoples of the south both culturally and linguistically.
Final proof you didn’t read the article I sent you 🙂 The issue wasn’t about linguistics or culture, but genetics. While the AIT is a fact – much to the consternation of the Hindu RW and nonsense theories like “out of India” should be discarded – there simply isn’t as clear-cut a delineation as many seem to believe. The roots of both so-called “Indo-Aryans” and “Dravidians” are more tightly conflated.
As a proponent of religious harmony I will not reply to this
Given the huge amounts of smears and Hinduhobia in the Western press, I am deeply skeptical to believe all the lurid claims about native American religions at face value, which often serve as moral justifications for abrahamic colonisation.
Even if barbarism like human sacrifice was commonly recorded, we should not forget the witch burnings of Europe (and the central role the church played in fanning the flames, or at very least not trying to stop it). Let alone the gargantuan bloodsheds all in the name of religious maxims.
As for Christianity, I must confess that you folks have better PR agents than the moslems. Even blatant frauds like Mother Teresa are still hailed as a saint in this day and age long after she got exposed for her psychopathy.
Indian hostility to Christianity is still quite an unique thing, and arguably one of the strongest signifiers of identity that I’ve seen. Even Muslims, who can be quite hostile to Christianity, tend to condemn it for being polytheist but from what I’ve seen, still believe that it is a level above paganism. Atheists, even extreme ones, seem to condemn all religions equally.
I’ve seen some other pagan religious followers condemn Christianity as secretly evil, or otherwise anti-humanistic, but Indians really do seem to have a fervency that is unmatched.
I find Christianity to be overall beautiful and steak to be delicious. Could have done with more witch burnings to weed out the Lousie Mensch of the world.
I’m not trying to help China. Helping usually makes things worse, and history follows its predetermined course anyways.
Helping means forcing and interfering, very against the Tao, which is about non-doing.
What I am doing, is describing.
My vision of what I think will happen with China, is that the current authoritarianism is a necessary phase (and thus, with qualifications and reservations, good, for China) after which, will be followed by a loosening up phase where Chinese creativity will be given the opportunity to flourish, as it did in the Tang Dynasty. There will be no creativity under the CCP, and China will hit a wall under the CCP, which will lead to the New Tang phase.
In my opinion, the next stage in world culture is humanizing technology, based on a vision of integrating with nature rather than aggressively dominating it. I think China, along with some countries in Europe, will be leaders here. China will rediscover its Taoist past, and integrate it with its technological present.
Only then will we see the full fruits of technology.
Will it work out this way? Who knows?
I am not even really warning America against Chinese authoritarianism. As I said, events take their own course, and the folly of mankind is limitless.
Gobi is between Mongolia and China and was not obstacle for Xiongnu, Xianbei, Rourans, Turkic Khaganate, Mongols etc.
Hinduism disappeared from Southeast Asia, except couple pockets like Bali and small Champa minority in Vietnam.
Mongols converted to Buddhism after the Chingghis Khaan. So Hindudharma and Buddhadharma are doing quite equally.
Yes I didnt read your article, I dont know about genetics, but if you have seen and been with Punjabis and Tamils, they literally differ phenotypically as much as night and day. Not just the skin colour, but bone structure and facial characteristics. I think that I have read that Punjabis are closer to Afghanis and Iranians than they are to Tamils, you know one of those genetic distance charts. Sometimes man needs to trust his gut instinct.
Is the notion of free will the source of much suffering in the world? If things develop out of inner necessity, then our belief that we can control events may be just a fiction that leads to pointless frustration.
Our fights, our passions, our anxieties, are based on the idea that things can be other than they are.
In Japanese Pure Land Buddhism – the final development of Buddhism- we are told there is no need to try and do good whatsoever. When asked if this will not lead to evil behavior, the response is, do you find in yourself the desire to murder?
When I am generous or kind, and avoid hurting someone, its because I feel an inner desire to be like that, not because of any religious instruction. It is its own reward.
In Mahayana Buddhism, we are taught to see the self, as an agent standing outside things and controlling them, as an illusion. With no self, there is no free will.
Alexandra David-Neel was a great French woman explorer of Tibet in the 19th century, and she wrote a book called the Secret Doctrines of Tibet, in which she was taught by a Tibetan guru the essence of Buddhism; events take their predetermined course according to cause and effect and karma, we do not exist as seperate selves, and we can control nothing.
She was also told, average people cannot understand this message.
Taoism believes in wu wei, literally non doing, or not forcing events but going with the grain – or the trend – of things naturally.
The ancient Greek Pyrrhonians thought we cannot know anything and we cannot figure out how to live using reason, but must suspend all preferences and judgements and live spontaneously and according to custom. Very similar to Mahayana Buddhism, books have been written on the connection between the two.
The Epicureans and Stoics also taught lack of free will.
Actually Khyber pass, Northwest frontier and Waziristan are easily defendable in comparison to that what Chinese needed to deal with. Its always been puzzling to me that Indians had natural fortification in Hindukush and how badly they utilised it. Actually Gobi isnt even between China and Mongolia, but between the Northern Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, Inner Mongolia is prime land for sheep grazing and pasturing, so again the Chinese frontier was harder to defend, think about it, thousands of kilometres steppe frontier!
You Bagdad example is low quality trolling effort, three of the four Mongol Khanates converted to Islam, and its not like Iran and Iraq endured for hundred years under a non muslim rule.
I have been noticing among Chinese nationalists, a distinctive debating style.
Basically, mock, and pose as superior. Strike a pose, act as if you’re already superior, and offer little of substance or argument.
Its easy to see this as the tactics of the unintelligent and insecure, and they are that, but I think they are something much more significant than that.
The lack of interest in intelligent argument, and the resort to attack, is the behavior of those who want to win rather than understand.
Logical debate presupposes a potential willingness to admit defeat, if you are proved wrong. It presupposes a willingness to submit to objective rules. A disdain for argument, and a resort to mockery, indicates an unwillingness to submit to any rule. A disdain for logical argument also indicates a disinterest in objective reality, and a desire to impose a subjective vision.
It is the tactic of those who no longer wish to understand or see, but only to force. Everyone knows that logical argument does not persuade, and is merely a pastime of intellectuals. Nietzsche described logic as the tactic of the weak.
People interested in power, do not stoop to logic. They strike a pose. They act “as if” they are already in the superior position. They mock.
Intelligence is the weapon of the weak. Those who are after power use stupidity. Its been said power makes stupid, but stupidity may be the intelligence of power; that is to say, being stupid, power is actually being intelligent.
Logical debate presupposes a potential willingness to admit defeat, if you are proved wrong. It presupposes a willingness to submit to objective rules.
You’ll get less mockery the day that you actually practice any of those.
Could have done with more witch burnings to weed out the Lousie Mensch of the world.
Seems like a lot of witches murdered their husbands. I suspect that the narrative regarding witches in Europe is pretty exaggerated.
Someone should write a tome entitled A Short, Unpozzed History of World that would serve as a counterpoint to HG Wells and countless others. There are really countless politico-historical narratives that need to be debunked. From Andalusia to Guernica in Spain, to countless ones in other places.
Stephen Cohen offers a very tendentious interpretation of Ukraine’s referendums and reveals himself to be either mistaken about a very fundamental thing (doubtful) or dishonest (more likely).
I don’t think that Cohen is consciously being dishonest here.
There was nothing “incongruous” about the two referenda. The first one in March represented a huge break from the USSR by asking if people wanted Ukraine to be sovereign. The questions were:
” Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed? ” 71% voted Yes.
The second question was “Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of a Union of Soviet Sovereign States on the basis on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine?” 82% voted Yes.
Declaration of State Sovereignty was de facto independence:
“The document decreed that Ukrainian SSR laws took precedence over the laws of the USSR, and declared that the Ukrainian SSR would maintain its own army and its own national bank with the power to introduce its own currency.[2] The declaration also proclaimed that the republic has intent to become in a future “a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs,”
So 82% of Ukrainians voted to have a state whose laws were supreme on Ukrainian territory, that had its own currency, and its own army that would not be in an alliance with the army of Russia. The USSR would be transformed into something like the EU, but with no NATO, and with no Euro.
Cohen twists this around to mean they simply voted to keep the USSR and then claims that somehow this doesn’t match the result of the independence referendum a few months later.
Formal independence itself wasn’t an option on that March referendum. Nationalists were ecstatic that 82% of Ukrainians voted for sovereignty (own laws, own army, own central bank leading to own money). It’s a rather cavalier attitude towards the truth, to claim this means they voted to keep the USSR. When independence was made an option only a few months later, it got over 90% of the vote.
If independence was allegedly so popular in Ukraine in March 1991, then why exactly was it not put on the ballot in Ukraine right then and there? And I don’t just mean in ex-Austrian Ukraine, but throughout all of Ukraine.
For that matter, if independence was allegedly so popular in Ukraine in March 1991, why not simply have Ukraine refuse to participate in the March 1991 Soviet referendum at all like the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia apparently did?
For that matter, if the sovereignty package for Ukraine was allegedly so good in March 1991, why exactly was there such vehement opposition to this package in Galicia and only tepid and lukewarm support for this package in Volhynia during this time? You can’t say that “Oh, Galicians also had independence on the ballot in March 1991” because that referendum–being localized to Galicia–was non-binding; thus, why not also have Galicians vote for Ukrainian sovereignty in March 1991 in the referendum that was actually binding? Also, in any case, Volhynians did not even have any non-binding referendum on independence in March 1991, and yet their support for this allegedly great Ukrainian sovereignty package was still significantly less in March 1991 than in the other, more pro-Russian parts of Ukraine.
Finally, I find it interesting that Ukrainians wanted to remain part of an economic union with the other USSR countries in March 1991 as opposed to, say, joining the European Union during this time. Why exactly was this the case?
Personally, I’m willing to have a more nuanced view on this topic: Specifically, I acknowledge that it’s possible that when Ukrainians voted for sovereignty in March 1991, some or even many of them might not have actually known what exactly the Ukrainian Parliament’s previous sovereignty resolution actually stated. (This Ukrainian sovereignty resolution wasn’t actually reproduced in full on the ballot in this referendum, was it?) I also acknowledge that the reason that a full independence referendum was not held in all of Ukraine in March 1991 might have been because such a referendum might have been perceived as being too risky back then. Finally, I acknowledge that different Ukrainians might have had different views about what exactly they voted for when they voted in favor of independence in December 1991. I think that Ukrainians’ opinions on independence in December 1991 would have been clearer had the text of this referendum explicitly stated that a Yes vote would result in full independence for Ukraine and in a complete break between Ukraine and the other ex-USSR countries. Likewise, I think that Ukrainians’ opinions on sovereignty in March 1991 would have been clearer had the text of the Ukrainian Parliament’s previous sovereignty resolution actually been on the referendum ballot in full so that everyone in this referendum could actually read this Ukrainian sovereignty resolution’s text in its entirety before they actually voted in the March 1991 Ukrainian referendum on Ukrainian sovereignty.
I suspect that any global-political organization would inevitably become woke sooner or later. IMO, the first mistake is trying to be a global organization, and not exclude anyone. At the very least, it would probably be a good idea to exclude countries that have diplomats that reliably misbehave – that flaunt their immunity. I think it might be a better idea, if only civilized countries met.
China is a pretty bleak and hopeless place right now that offers little cause for optimism, but lest anyone think this is “representative” of the Chinese spirit, we should all remember the wonderful and cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty era, managing to combine high culture with military and political power. It was perhaps Chinas Golden Age. All cultures repeat themselves, usually with a slight variation. Cultures are variations on a theme. I expect, when China breaks out of its current malaise, it will renew the spitit of the Tang Dybasty era, but this time with technology and all that might mean!
Historians generally regard the Tang as a high point in Chinese civilization, and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture.[7] Tang territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, rivaled that of the Han dynasty.
….In addition to its political hegemony, the Tang exerted a powerful cultural influence over neighboring East Asian nations such as Japan and Korea.
Chinese culture flourished and further matured during the Tang era. It is traditionally considered the greatest age for Chinese poetry.[13] Two of China’s most famous poets, Li Bai and Du Fu, belonged to this age, as did many famous painters such as Han Gan, Zhang Xuan, and Zhou Fang. Tang scholars compiled a rich variety of historical literature, as well as encyclopedias and geographical works. Notable innovations included the development of woodblock printing. Buddhism became a major influence in Chinese culture, with native Chinese sects gaining prominence.
This was when the magnificent Chan sect of Buddhism was developed, in my view the high point of Buddhism.
The governmental system was supported by a large class of Confucian intellectuals selected through either civil service examinations or recommendations. In the Tang period, Taoism and Buddhism were commonly practiced ideologies that played a large role in people’s daily lives. The Tang Chinese enjoyed feasting, drinking, holidays, sports, and all sorts of entertainment, while Chinese literature blossomed and was more widely accessible with new printing methods
.
The Tang capital was the largest city in the world at its time, the population of the city wards and its suburban countryside reaching two million inhabitants.[28] The Tang capital was very cosmopolitan, with ethnicities of Persia, Central Asia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, India, and many other places living within. Naturally, with this plethora of different ethnicities living in Chang’an, there were also many different practiced religions, such as Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, and Zoroastrianism, among others.[206] With the open access to China that the Silk Road to the west facilitated, many foreign settlers were able to move east to China, while the city of Chang’an itself had about 25,000 foreigners living within.[166] Exotic green-eyed, blond-haired Tocharian ladies serving wine in agate and amber cups, singing, and dancing at taverns attracted customers.[
The Tang period was a golden age of Chinese literature and art. Over 48,900 poems penned by some 2,200 Tang authors have survived to the present day.[214][215] Skill in the composition of poetry became a required study for those wishing to pass imperial examinations,[216] while poetry was also heavily competitive; poetry contests amongst guests at banquets and courtiers were common.[2
Much more than earlier periods, the Tang era was renowned for the time reserved for leisure activity
, especially for those in the upper classes.[252] Many outdoor sports and activities were enjoyed during the Tang, including archery,[253] hunting,[254] horse polo,[255] cuju (soccer),[256] cockfighting,[257] and even tug of war.[258] Government officials were granted vacations during their tenure in office.
Although they were renowned for their polite behavior, the courtesans were known to dominate the conversation among elite men, and were not afraid to openly castigate or criticize prominent male guests who talked too much or too loudly, boasted too much of their accomplishments, or had in some way ruined dinner for everyone by rude behavior (on one occasion a courtesan even beat up a drunken man who had insulted her).[268] When singing to entertain guests, courtesans not only composed the lyrics to their own songs, but they popularized a new form of lyrical verse by singing lines written by various renowned and famous men in Chinese history.[214]
It was fashionable for women to be full-figured (or plump). Men enjoyed the presence of assertive, active women.[269][270] The foreign horse-riding sport of polo from Persia became a wildly popular trend among the Chinese elite, and women often played the sport (as glazed earthenware figurines from the time period portray).[
It was also a great period for science and technology. I urge you all to read up on this wonderful wra, abd be inspired at what China may one day be again.
It’s always sad when a non-Islamic place falls to Islam. It just becomes uglier and worse. Persia, Central Asia, Constantinople. So much beauty lost. It’s like Communism.
If independence was allegedly so popular in Ukraine in March 1991, then why exactly was it not put on the ballot in Ukraine right then and there?
The people didn’t choose the questions that were on the ballots. They only voted for what they could. And they voted for the statement that provided de facto independence.
For that matter, if independence was allegedly so popular in Ukraine in March 1991, why not simply have Ukraine refuse to participate in the March 1991 Soviet referendum
I don’t know about the other republics but Ukraine was still run by old Communist elites, who bent to popular pressure but didn’t break.
For that matter, if the sovereignty package for Ukraine was allegedly so good in March 1991, why exactly was there such vehement opposition to this package in Galicia and only tepid and lukewarm support for this package in Volhynia during this time?
Because with full independence on the ballot, this was seen as the better choice.
You can’t say that “Oh, Galicians also had independence on the ballot in March 1991” because *that* referendum–being localized to Galicia–was *non-binding*; thus, why not also have Galicians vote for Ukrainian sovereignty in March 1991 in the referendum that was *actually binding*?
Of course you can. Unless you think Galicians wanted to both preserve the USSR as it had always been (that is, reject the sovereignty referendum,) and be independent, they voted for what they wanted most, regardless of binding status. So they ignored de facto independence (sovereignty) and voted for de jure independence. Ukrainian nationalists were generally ecstatic about the 82% pro-sovereignty vote. It was really twisting things to describe this as a pro-USSR vote as Cohen did.
I acknowledge that it’s possible that when Ukrainians voted for sovereignty in March 1991, some or even many of them might not have actually known what exactly the Ukrainian Parliament’s previous sovereignty resolution actually stated. (This Ukrainian sovereignty resolution wasn’t actually reproduced in full on the ballot in this referendum, was it?)
Very doubtful. Sovereignty was a huge deal in Ukraine at the time and everyone knew that it meant local laws would be supreme, and local Ukrainian army (no more Ukrainians being sent to Afghanistan or wherever on Moscow’s orders). These people weren’t Americans reading the ballot 30 years later. They were living through it.
I think that Ukrainians’ opinions on independence in December 1991 would have been clearer had the text of this referendum explicitly stated that a Yes vote would result in full independence for Ukraine and in a complete break between Ukraine and the other ex-USSR countries.
Independence didn’t result in a full break, there was the Commonwealth of Independent States. But what else would independence mean if not full independence?
An eminent Japanese statesman of the 19th century, when surveying the wealth of the West and the prospects for Japan, remarked that japan would never become as wealthy, because they were too happy and content.
He was a wise man who saw deep into the springs of human motivation. He was also a mistaken wise man. Japan became both unhappy and wealthy.
In light of this remark, its not surprising that today’s Japanese, living during the stagnation of Japan, report themselves the happiest and most content generation since perhaps the encounter with the West. Nicknamed the “Satori generation” after the flash of Zen enlightenment, they have no ambition or desires, and are perfectly happy without them.
I often joke that if the Chinese truly want to become creative, they should eliminate the widespread availability of easy sex with prostitutes. The resulting sexual tension will lead to frustration, sublimation, then creativity.
The West, as we know, is the society of the Great Dissatisfaction. Just as the surest to make society liberal is to make it safe and prosperous, the surest way to engineer creativity is to make people dissatisfied. Take away their pleasures and make them feel inadequate. Make them unhappy.
Of course, here I am talking about Promethean creativity, that aims to transcend the human condition, not what might be called Dionysian creativity, which aims to embellish and beautify life, and is born not from lack, but exuberance.
Given the huge amounts of smears and Hinduhobia in the Western press, I am deeply skeptical to believe all the lurid claims about native American religions at face value, which often serve as moral justifications for abrahamic colonisation.
Fortunately for you most modern scholars are anti-Christian and anti-European. Yet they still acknowledge mass Aztec brutality and that killing rates by hunter-gatherers are on the scale of World War II Europe. Aside from involuntary spread of infectious disease, Spanish impact on the New World (it’s deliberate impact) was on balance very positive.
Even if barbarism like human sacrifice was commonly recorded, we should not forget the witch burnings of Europe (and the central role the church played in fanning the flames, or at very least not trying to stop it).
Aztec human sacrifice scale was even greater, and longer-lasting. And Catholic Spain didn’t engage in witch-killing on a large scale. You lump all Abrahamic peoples or even Christians together; I’ll just defend traditional mainstream Christians (Catholic and Orthodox). These have in general improved the world and made it better. Puritans, not so much though they have been impressive in certain ways.
Up until the pandemic, it usually did mean a buffet. That’s what we did when my mom passed away. Most people can find something that they like at a buffet. I’m thinking that perhaps this wouldn’t be enough to entice you to show up at a funeral of somebody that you never knew? I guess it all depends on how hungry you might be? 🙂
The Irish have always had interesting wakes for their dearly departed. This is one of the funniest movies of all time, guaranteed to please:
The people didn’t choose the questions that were on the ballots. They only voted for what they could. And they voted for the statement that provided de facto independence.
So, who chose the questions?
I don’t know about the other republics but Ukraine was still run by old Communist elites, who bent to popular pressure but didn’t break.
Yes, and the Ukrainian people–other than Galicians–elected those elites in free and fair elections in 1990, no?
Because with full independence on the ballot, this was seen as the better choice.
Sure, full independence was the better choice, but again, the referendum on full independence was non-binding due to it only being limited to Galicia. So, why not also vote Yes in the binding referendum on (alleged) de facto independence–you know, the one that actually mattered?
Of course you can. Unless you think Galicians wanted to both preserve the USSR as it had always been (that is, reject the sovereignty referendum,) and be independent, they voted for what they wanted most, regardless of binding status. So they ignored de facto independence (sovereignty) and voted for de jure independence. Ukrainian nationalists were generally ecstatic about the 82% pro-sovereignty vote. It was really twisting things to describe this as a pro-USSR vote as Cohen did.
Actually, I would argue that a Yes vote on full independence and a No vote on de facto independence would indeed produce the paradoxical result of both voting for full independence and voting to preserve the USSR as it already was.
And also, in any case, why did the nationalistic Volhynians (who didn’t have a full independence option on the ballot) vote to keep the USSR as it already was to a much greater extent than the more pro-Russian parts of Ukraine did?
Very doubtful. Sovereignty was a huge deal in Ukraine at the time and everyone knew that it meant local laws would be supreme, and local Ukrainian army (no more Ukrainians being sent to Afghanistan or wherever on Moscow’s orders). These people weren’t Americans reading the ballot 30 years later. They were living through it.
Interesting interpretation. So, you reject the possibility that some or even many Ukrainians could have voted for de facto independence in March 1991 and for full independence in December 1991 as a bargaining chip to extract greater concessions from the center (Moscow)?
(Interestingly enough, this bargaining chip argument has also been proposed elsewhere. For instance, Ayesha Jalal argues that Muhammad Ali Jinnah might not have actually been serious in his demand for Pakistan and instead wanted to use this demand as a bargaining chip to get more concessions for Indian Muslims from the Indian center. I’ll let you decide just how much strength her arguments actually have.)
Independence didn’t result in a full break, there was the Commonwealth of Independent States. But what else would independence mean if not full independence?
The Commonwealth of Independent States was largely symbolic, no–equivalent to the British Commonwealth? Yes, Russia tried to turn it into something much more than that through deeper integration, but Ukraine and possibly some other countries always vetoed these proposals. And in any case didn’t Ukraine refuse to ratify the CIS Charter or something like that?
But anyway, what I was actually thinking of here was declaring independence but then using independence as a way of extracting concessions from the center (Moscow) in exchange for a new union. Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan (but not Kazakhstan) also declared their secession from the Soviet Union between August and October 1991, but–unlike Ukraine–were nevertheless willing to negotiate in favor of a renewed union in some form all of the way up to December 1991, no?
For what it’s worth, I think that it might be prudent to find some Ukrainian polling from 1992-1994 (and the earlier, the better!) asking Ukrainians whether or not they regret the collapse and break-up of the Soviet Union. Let’s see whether the percentage of Ukrainians who express regret over this–especially very early on–is significantly higher than the 10% who voted No in Ukraine’s December 1991 independence referendum.
Aside from involuntary spread of infectious disease, Spanish impact on the New World (it’s deliberate impact) was on balance very positive.
Modern scholars will say without the Spanish incursion there’d be no colonialism or African slavery.
Basically, that these incursions led to the growth of global white supremacy; basically, not only are they negative but any positive comments about them or pride would result in camps||
This appears to be data from 2002 (so, after over a decade of economic misery), but it’s quite interesting that a majority of voters in Southern and Eastern Ukraine in 2002 would have opposed Ukrainian independence had they been allowed to vote again on this topic, as would have over one-third of voters in Central Ukraine:
Of course, the people in that poll–especially from the more pro-Russian regions of Ukraine–also might have been misremembering how some of them actually voted in the December 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum.
The sad fact is that the US economy is 70% consumption, against an OECD average of 60%. We don’t invest in future productivity; we borrow and we consume. That is America’s problem, and Trump did nothing to correct it. Someone needs to tell Americans that there’s a difference between winning and feeling good while we’re losing. If America wants to remain the world’s preeminent power, it needs to teach high school students Calculus in 10th grade and subsidize engineering majors instead of resentment studies. It needs a tax system that encourages US tech companies to make hardware as well as software. And it needs a lot of qualified immigrants from China and India to build new industries while we wait for the long-term impact of education reforms
Prof. Bates replied: “Sorry… given the declining IQ of the American population due to dysgenetic behavior of large parts of the American population and the failure of our schools to educate the young to produce the necessary skillset to pull it off, any thought of trying to repeat what Reagan was able to do is very, very unlikely. The odds of being able to reform our education system are as unlikely [as] someone winning [the lottery] Powerball – heck no, winning 10 Powerballs. Why so low? Because of the political interests that make the public education system the clusterf*** it is. Also, China unlike the Soviet Union is wholly integrated into the global economic system and is working at the same level as we are. No, we f*** up in 1988-89 when [we] did not clamp down and cutting them off… Now we have the devil to pay… I prefer not to be ruled by them… so I think what Neumann recommends needs to be taken seriously if one wishes not to face the dismal future of slavery under a Chinese hegemonic despotism.”
Oy Vey!
Goldman about Trump and the failure to make America great again:
Well something like piano sales, doesn’t indicate China will suddenly produce a generation of Dave Brubecks. (Who has to mentioned as his 100th anniversary was on Saturday).
But it is positive indication that will be music connoisseurship in China, which is perhaps some necessary, if not sufficient, condition for a society which will produce creative pianists.
In terms of piano sales. China is the second largest market, but this is of course partly just a result of having the largest population. Per capita Japanese still buy almost ten times more new pianos than China. Similarly, USA is buying 5 times more new pianos per capita than China.
But the high ratio of acoustic pianos in the Chinese buy, and the fact it is growing in China (while falls in the rest of the world) – some promising indicators.
The people didn’t choose the questions that were on the ballots. They only voted for what they could. And they voted for the statement that provided de facto independence.
So, who chose the questions?
The Communist-era rulers.
“I don’t know about the other republics but Ukraine was still run by old Communist elites, who bent to popular pressure but didn’t break.”
Yes, and the Ukrainian people–other than Galicians–elected those elites in free and fair elections in 1990, no?
Sure, full independence was the better choice, but again, the referendum on full independence was non-binding due to it only being limited to Galicia. So, why not also vote Yes in the binding referendum on (alleged) de facto independence–you know, the one that actually mattered?
Why do you call it alleged de facto independence? What do you think having one’s own army, own laws being supreme, own national bank mean?
Again, are you implying Galicians wanted to preserve the USSR in its current form by not voting for the binding question? That would be silly. With independence on the ballot, “binding” or not, mere de facto independence was rejected as not being good enough.
And also, in any case, why did the nationalistic Volhynians (who didn’t have a full independence option on the ballot) vote to keep the USSR as it already was to a much greater extent than the more pro-Russian parts of Ukraine did
Do you have figures? I’d guess some small % of hardcore anti-Soviets would have boycotted rather than take part in any vote organized by a state that they despised, even a vote in favor of de facto independence.
Interesting interpretation. So, you reject the possibility that some or even many Ukrainians could have voted for de facto independence in March 1991 and for full independence in December 1991 as a bargaining chip to extract greater concessions from the center (Moscow)?
I doubt many voters choose based on being bargaining chips, but I suppose it is possible that some of the local Communists who organized the election may have done so with that strategy in mind.
it’s quite interesting that a majority of voters in Southern and Eastern Ukraine in 2002 would have opposed Ukrainian independence had they been allowed to vote again on this topic, as would have over one-third of voters in Central Ukraine
I’m surprised it was only 1/3 in Central Ukraine. Right after the 90s nightmare I’d suspect at least half of Central Ukrainians regretted independence. The difference between such people in Central Ukraine and the ones in the East is that the Central Ukrainians felt that it was too late to go back, that the only way forward was through and with Europe.
For practicing music at home, a digital piano is a great thing – but possibly the child would need access to good acoustic pianos in their school, before they really fall in love with piano music.
As a child I had a digital piano in my room, and for several years my teacher used to actually teach me on that. But I remember I only really enjoyed playing with the acoustic pianos in my grandparents’ and in my school. Acoustic pianos usually do allow creation of much more complex sounds.
Digital pianos are great as a convenience practicing (especially with headphones), but it’s not going to make real pianos unemployed.
Digital pianos have come a long way and are a perfectly acceptable substitute for acoustic pianos for beginning piano
Digital pianos are improving, although the manufacturers (here is somewhere we can criticize Japanese) are definitely lazy in terms of upgrading their onboard sounds.
There is potentiality for very realistic digital instruments. VSTs like Ravenscroft and Pianoteq 6 and above software, can be realistic and complex already. But the internal sounds on the digital piano are usually quite far behind, and just acceptable at best, and perhaps won’t make you fall in love with music if you don’t also have access to real pianos (e.g. at school).
main feature you need to concern yourself with is the key action. Acoustic keys are ‘naturally’ weighted and have a characteristic feel when playing. Digital pianos
For me, most important is sound of the samples (or more recently piano modelling), and then the speakers and amplication (if you don’t just play on headphones).
Surely, the action of the keys is also important for many people, and a bad one will make you hate your keyboard quite soon.
I agree that an acceptable (for many people) keyboard action is now cheaper than ever. For example, Yamaha P-515 is quite pleasant in terms of keyboard action.
But to recreate the sound of an acoustic piano, you would need to pay also for a VST like Pianoteq, and to upgrade the speakers (i.e. studio monitors). So in the end, it could cost $2000 and look a bit messy. And then end result might be almost as musically enjoyable as a (i.e. $2000-$3000) acoustic upright piano, with advantage you can play on keyboards, record yourself, use different VST software, etc.
The Epicureans did not teach a lack of free will. The atoms which are governed by laws, which in turn govern behaviour, can swerve from their usual path. Although, from the surviving writings it is not quite clear what may cause the swerve.
Patriotism in the sense that people are supporting their country and traditions – this can be a sign that the person has a “prosocial” attitude and supports his neighbours. It can also be a sign of prosocial conformism, which usually indicates a better citizen, and people should can complimented for this.*
Conversely, people who would hate their own country, without some legitimate reason or experience to do that – it’s often a sign of an antisocial person, in conflict with society (here is probably overrepresented orientation among dissidents that obsessively criticize their home country – and why dissidents can be sometimes selecting for a certain unpleasant type of people).
So, sure, a desire to support your country and its traditions, can be a sign of maturity.
But a teenage boy nationalism, where you project your identity imaginatively onto great battles (in reality, more like bloody hell) of the past – or start arguing about how your country’s dog, is stronger than another country’s dog. Here is usually something almost masturbatory, or in the most sympathetic interpretation, we might say: something like a “peter pan” desire to keep alive playground emotions and certain escapisms.
Although here might be a cultural difference in different countries. Currently Russia, it’s prosocial to express a mild patriotism, while in anglosaxon cultures it can seem to be now the opposite, perhaps as a form of self-deprecating politeness (i.e. conformist attitude for English people seems to be that you should ostentatiously criticize England and its politics, when speaking to people from non-anglosaxon countries).
millions of people you have never meet should not seen as somehow tiresome but amazing that a thread, sometimes obvious but sometimes tenuous, runs through such a large group of seemingly unconnected people.
Our ancestors (if you count a little) before they were such tribes of humans, were nonhumans.
There is something more mystical about all of it, but rather in a disorientating way.
We descended from “Purgatorius”, who looked like below. This my glorious ancestor – some kind of squirrel. https://i.imgur.com/dO8vumu.jpg
It reminds me of how Socrates (in Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus) was mocking peoples’ pride in their ancestors. Yet he didn’t even have access to the knowledge that our ancestors looked like a squirrel
“Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth; and when they sing the praises of family, and say that someone is a gentleman because he can show seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray a dull and narrow vision in those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, innumerable.” https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Theaetetus
there is nothing really arbitrary
What feels more genuine, as opposed to something arbitrarily selected, is the place of your childhood, your classmates of your youth, the trees and landscapes in which you first encounter the world, and the society at a particular of history into which you soul land, and your consciousness has grown. Schopenhauer implied that we our soul has somehow chosen the time and place of our birth.
For people from Ancient Greek city states, these places could match perfectly to their national identity. However, in the modern world, if you live in a very large country, then these deeper emotions and connections to your home, match – to the homecity, and not to random parts of a country which might have a very different atmosphere.
My comments were aimed at the beginner market. No parent (unless they’re a pianist) is going to be able to reliably distinguish sound quality between, say, a P90 and a P515 (which is way beyond entry level). I know this because I was scouting around for an instrument this year, looking to begin playing again after a looong layoff, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good even entry level pianos sounded and felt.
I had a friend when I was a kid who claimed he could cheat fate, his argument being that if it was his fate to be a doctor, he could just become a dentist. I replied that being a dentist would then have been his real fate, which is not something a person could know beforehand anyway. The same thing applies to your characterization of the Epicurean position. What does it matter if they “swerve,” since no one knew what their “usual path” would have been anyway? To ours eyes, it’s indistinguishable.
No parent (unless they’re a pianist) is going to be able to reliably distinguish sound quality between, say, a P90 and a P515 (which is way beyond entry level).
Lol that sounds like my parents when I was a child. But after a certain amount of hours, a musical child might perhaps fall in love with a good acoustic piano, as it produces complicated sounds, very responsively. I’m not fussy about acoustic pianos even – many of them have an inspiring character even when they are bad piano.
I’m more aspiring to “amateur composer” than aspiring to “amateur pianist” though, so I’m not usually so fussy about piano performance, as about being inspired by sounds.
looking to begin playing again after a looong layoff, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good even entry level pianos sounded and felt
If you only have one of those though. I think that after a certain number of hours, you could find that the sound is lacking complexity (aside from the issue of speakers and amplification – real pianos are also a lot louder than a cheap digital piano).
At the beginning you might be happy that digital piano plays the notes, in tune, and with a pleasant sound. But your brain might soon adapt to the samples (which onboard are often only containing few hundred megabytes of information), and find the sound becomes too predictable.
I also don’t have a acoustic piano, so have for years being confronting this problem. I find that with keyboards (even with complex sounds from VST) I probably practice far less than I would with a good acoustic piano. I have access to an acoustic piano at a practice (which is often out of tune).
Not sure why cleverness in political and business dealings is synonymous with Jewishness. I would say it is simply function of operating a long-standing empire.
LOL
Never mind then.
With all due respect, there was no way the Ottoman would have handed over control of the Orthodox population to Serbian clerics.
It again seems like you’re misunderstanding me.
I never expected let alone cared about whether Serb clerics would have been able to control the affairs of Orthodox Christians in Greece, Anatolia, Middle East or anywhere else besides Serb ethnic areas. I don’t think any Serb really has a problem or cares about Greek clerics running Orthodox Churches in those other areas.
My problem was with the fact that Greek Phanariotes in the Ottoman Empire, were given/took over control, of the Serbian Orthodox Church and harmed the wellbeing of Serbs in the Ottoman Empire.
Of course. Also, the social structure of each nation differed. Greece had a very important merchant class that was spread across Europe and could link into sources of financial support. The Serbs were largely an agricultural people at that time.
It’s true that Serbs were an agricultural people, although Serbs were practically split between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empire for many centuries. That’s why I always get a bit annoyed whenever I hear “we were 500 years under the Turks” (it’s only partly true) because it doesn’t capture the much more complex and unpleasant reality of being a smaller nation stuck between two large and powerful empires for hundreds of years (always being in the middle of their wars where your towns and villages will be inevitably sacked and burned randomly and arbitrarily by both sides at some point or another). The Habsburg Empire was obviously usually better for Serbs because Habsburg Emperors granted them religious, ethnic, economic and other rights in return for Serbs giving useful and important service as frontiersmen and soldiers on the Habsburg Empire’s borders with the Ottoman Empire. A whole bunch of poison pills came from the Habsburg Empire though, in the form of violating Serb national rights during peace with the Ottomans (when the role of Serbs as vitally important frontiersmen became much less important), enforcing Roman Catholicism, Uniatism, serfdom to Croat-Magyar nobles, Magyarization, Croatization, Illyrianism/Yugoslavianism, and so on, although that is a different story. Still, at the start of the 19th century, a whole bunch of Serbs in the Habsburg Empire in the form of administrative, political and religious leaders, with obviously soldiers and supplies, served as a welcome form of help and contribution to the Serbian Uprisings and development of the Principality of Serbia.
I would not be so sure which side it is better to be on, Euro-Atlantic or Russia. I am not always happy with the EU, NATO and the Americans but do not underestimate Russia’s weakness to project power beyond its border. Just witness how they recently let Turks overunn an ancient Christian land.
Russia is mortally under siege and encircled by USA/NATO. It’s not good to have unrealistically high expectations of Russia because then one can get easily disillusioned.
Dark clouds are coming for the world and especially Russia (it will be no.1 on the firing line similar to how Iran/Middle East are right now under “maximum pressure”) in the likely imminent ascent of the Joe Biden presidency (and no, Biden Administration won’t do shit about Turkey, in fact Turkey is likely going to make itself very useful against Russia and Serbia in the next few years).
Expect “wonderful” things like Ukraine being actively armed and supported to reconquer the Donbass (to the delight of Ukrops like Mr Hack), efforts and possibly a war (if Serbs resist strongly enough) to eliminate Republika Srpska and annex Bosnia, then Serbia, into NATO to transform the Balkans into a 100% Islamic shithole inhospitable for Christians artificially enabled by USA/NATO, and so on …
My personal hopes actually rest more with China (not just it’s direct ties with Serbia, but the challenges it poses to the USA Empire globally) than with Russia at this point (Russia has done about everything it possibly can by now to help Serbia, and it can’t really do much more for the foreseeable future). The moment that China physically delivers it’s FK-3/KS-1 systems to Serbia (hopefully they’ll do this ASAP, ideally before 2oth/21st January), which are Chinese equivalents of Russian S-300’s/S-400’s, Serbia’s position will be good enough to resist anything Biden’s administration may try because no one with such weapons systems has ever been militarily invaded by the USA at all, let alone successfully (that’s why a whole bunch of other tactics are then necessary to pursue). Vucic can then pursue diplomacy, negotiations and engage in various kinds of symbolic cucking (if necessary, like the thing in Washington already, although it’s very uncertain what will actually happen with that) to simply drag through and allow Serbs and Serbia to survive this upcoming difficult and precarious time period. Of course, the worst case scenarios could always happen regardless, but a moderate-high level of geopolitical uncertainty is simply standard for Serbia and Serbs as a nation to endure …
I settled on a Kawaii ES8, and you’re not wrong in your comments about sound. Still, my main objective was to grow accustomed to simply playing the notes again, so I figured if I manage to stick with it – a big if with me, my mind changes like the wind – I can always upgrade to a better sounding model later. I started at 8yo, but I was forced into it by my parents and spent the first seven or so years resenting it mightily; then I actually began to enjoy it, but quit a few years later – see my earlier comment about mind changing like the wind lol. I’m still extremely rusty. Playing p or pp at any fast tempo is an exercise in pure frustration, but a ‘fun’ kind of frustration too.
We descended from “Purgatorius”, who looked like below. This my glorious ancestor – some kind of squirrel.
Thanks. People often forget that. Vast majority of stuff humans argue about is irrelevant garbage.
Your great grandma the tree rat survived a teraton asteroid impact that wiped out majority of life on this planet. Compared to that, GDP, IQ, immigration, income inequality, WW3, robots and other bullshit is utterly material and inconsequential.
Just like we don’t really care what was the exact nut distribution in the tree rat domains, or how the tree rats traded nuts between forests, of if some tree rats had higher IQ than others.
The only thing that mattered was that after the impact some tree rats survived, found some food, and partners to breed with, thus carrying out the genetic lines that became us. This is the only universal principle that applies.
Given the huge amounts of smears and Hinduhobia in the Western press, I am deeply skeptical to believe all the lurid claims about native American religions at face value, which often serve as moral justifications for abrahamic colonisation.
We literally have archaeological towers of skulls from Mexico. European colonists and imperialists were fairly scrupulous in their recordings of the customs of the many natives they came across. Post-colonial efforts to create new narratives have proven false time and time again.
And why exactly were they nice enough to allow an independence question in Galicia?
The 1990 elections have been accurately described as “semi-free.” They also occurred during the course of the Communists’ fall in popularity but before that fall had accelerated.
Interesting. In any case, though, they were still sufficiently free for local nationalists to win them in the Baltics, Moldova, Armenia, and Georgia, no?
1. Why do you call it alleged de facto independence? What do you think having one’s own army, own laws being supreme, own national bank mean?
Because the terms of the Ukrainian parliament’s sovereignty declaration would have been the negotiating position of the Ukrainian SSR at the start of negotiations with the center (Moscow) over a new union treaty. However, these terms would not have necessarily been the negotiating position of the Ukrainian SSR at the end of these negotiations; in other words, there might have needed to be some give and take in these negotiations–and of course Moscow could use the threat of force to try to get the Ukrainians to back away from some of their more extreme demands. It’s worth noting that when the 1991 August coup attempt occurred in Moscow, Kravchuk, unlike Yeltsin, does not actually appear to have actively opposed this coup–presumably knowing that Ukrainians would be unwilling to actively militarily fight the coup plotters in the event that the coup plotters would have succeeded in taking control of Moscow and the Russian SFSR.
2. Again, are you implying Galicians wanted to preserve the USSR in its current form by not voting for the binding question? That would be silly. With independence on the ballot, “binding” or not, mere de facto independence was rejected as not being good enough.
That I agree with! But please tell me how exactly the Soviet Union would have reacted if the Ukrainian SSR would have voted No to a new Union Treaty by a 51-49 margin, with Galician pro-independence voters providing the decisive margin for the No side? Was Ukraine going to get full independence right then and there even though only Galicia would have actually voted for this?
Do you have figures? I’d guess some small % of hardcore anti-Soviets would have boycotted rather than take part in any vote organized by a state that they despised, even a vote in favor of de facto independence.
It’s too bad that we don’t have voter turnout percentages by oblast for the Ukrainian SSR for this referendum–at least not on that specific website.
I doubt many voters choose based on being bargaining chips, but I suppose it is possible that some of the local Communists who organized the election may have done so with that strategy in mind.
Do you think that most of the Muslims who supported Pakistan in the 1940s were likewise serious about separatism as opposed to preferring a stronger and better position for Muslims in a united India?
Was the 1990s nightmare not foreseeable ahead of time? If not, why not?
Anyway, the 1990s nightmare was a reason to support and put Rukh in charge of Ukraine rather than putting ex-Communists in charge of Ukraine. I really don’t like western Ukrainians’ Bandera-worship (though Russians also have idiotic Lenin-worship and Stalin-worship), but they might have been able to govern Ukraine better than ex-Sovoks actually did in real life. At the very least, western Ukrainians learned something about good government from 150 years of Hapsburg rule.
This 21st century version of the Yellow Terror is downright retarded. We’re scared of the Chinese because of 5G now? Tech companies are mostly parasites who produce junk geared towards frivolous consumption and rely on freebies from the military industrial complex. I wish the Chinese were taking over the tech industry. Sadly it will not happen.
The educational system is the leading cause of dysgenic breeding patterns. Society needs less investment in education.
When ancient Hellenes made first Buddha statues more than 2000 years ago, they modelled them on the fashion of Apollon. Buddha after all is related to the solar deities and he uses his reason and will in taming of our chaotic reality. We are an Apollonian religion, even our mildly antinomian practices are designed so that we could gain control over malevolent and chaotic forces. We as religion go further and beyond than Nietzsche could ever even dream of. Yes he was correct, reality is empty of meaning, empty of values, but unlike nihilists and Nietzschean egoists, Buddha understood that we can impose our own will unto this emptiness and create the most perfect truth and impose that truth on reality, so that it would become true by our own deeds! That we can perfect our will and by perfecting our will we perfect the means to control the chaos that surrounds us.
To Ano4
Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Jewel In Lotus Hum
Om Bodhicitta In Sunyata Hum
Om Will/Means In Emptiness Hum
That Ano4 is the profound meaning of our blessed mantra! Though everything is empty, we the subjects, and the external objects, we can create the most perfect reality from emptiness, achieve the most highest truth, and because things are empty, there is no most highest truth and most perfect reality! A sky without limits, a space without constraints! Beyond, beyond, further beyond, beyond all! Forever and ever!
Beyond, beyond, further beyond, beyond all! Forever and ever!
Until you meet the Sword||
ਖੰਡਾ ਪ੍ਰਿਥਮੈ ਸਾਜ ਕੈ ਜਿਨ ਸਭ ਸੈਸਾਰੁ ਉਪਾਇਆ ॥
kha(n)ddaa pirathamai saaj kai jin sabh saisaar upaiaa ||
That which created the double-edged sword and then Samsara.
In Sikhi, to view the [sargun] form of Akal Purkh you can look towards Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji & Sants. Like this to the [sargun] form of Bhagvati [Devi/Chandi] for one to view weapons [shastar and astar].
Although here might be a cultural difference in different countries. Currently Russia, it’s prosocial to express a mild patriotism, while in anglosaxon cultures it can seem to be now the opposite, perhaps as a form of self-deprecating politeness (i.e. conformist attitude for English people seems to be that you should ostentatiously criticize England and its politics, when speaking to people from non-anglosaxon countries).
It is something typical of certain classes of English people and has been getting increasingly mainstream; there are those comments by George Orwell from the 1930s about left-wing British intellectuals being more ready to rob a poor box than stand up during the national anthem and it seems to have grown from there. Lately it looks like they have got into the habit of doing it so much that they believe most of what they are saying and have become anti-patriotic, which is not sensible.
What about Arab slave trade? They dealt almost all of their history with millions of slaves, both black and white, and unlike Europeans, who werent any epitomes of humanity when dealing with the slaves, they often castrated their slaves, and I even read that sometimes eunuchs were purposefully disfigured or scarred that they were more hideous in Arabia and Iran. Im not sure anymore where I read that, probably from some book of the Lebanese British historian Albert Hourani, who by the way was highly sympathetic towards the Arab nationalism.
Where is Jatt Arya, our funny chad Sikh and who you are impostor? Because before we had cool Sikh stories, but now its like there is some whiny intersectional nigger posting instead. Lately you just whine about whites, colonialism, race, white supremacy, white fragility, and on and on.
Did you know that genetically Punjabis are closest of all Indians to Europeans?
Even British thought that Punjabis and Rajputs are racially Aryan and superior in comparison to other Indian ethnic groups. https://i.redd.it/6n28dj1msaby.jpg
The most common male lineage haplogroup among the Punjabis is R1a1a, which is VERY, VERY common among the Slavs.
So you have now a choice, to be a real Aryan guy or some weird whining pajeet wimp with a racial inferiority complex?
I get it, you want to use race discourse as a weapon against Anglos, I get it, but thats not the Dharmic way, Dharma is not subversive nor is it a poison. Dharma is the greatest weapon, in honest fight it can beat everything, and by virtuous example Dharma can transform everyone.
No sword can survive against VAJRA, the divine thunderbolt weapon of Indra, we Buddhists believe that Bodhicitta or the tamed and awakened mind is the Vajra, a most supreme weapon that there is, such weapon can pierce through every material, and no weapon or shield can endure before its might!
Did you read the article? It’s more about why America cannot be made great again than China. Gildman is far from being a China-hater. Quite the opposite, he always points towards these attitudes being deluded.
Delhi, on its part, is seeking “comprehensive disengagement”. Require the Indian army and Special Frontier Force units manning the Kailash heights to climb down encouraging the PLA, to then quickly occupy these commanding hill tops and permanently disadvantage the Indian army.
See what the PLA has done on the Depsang Plains — they have blocked Indian patrolling units from reaching northwest to the Karakorum Pass — that entire area amounting to some 900+ sq kms has, in effect, been lost.
pincer with approaches from Galwan and this indirectly captured territory, endangering the all-weather Indian access to the Siachen Glacier and generally the Saltoro Ridge.
The Chinese are relying on our national weakness for verbosity and reluctance to act.
Altan, a half million Sikhs have Delhi surrounded, scroll up for stories.
Im not posting CRT because I like it or care for it, it’s in “vogue” the new cool thing on the block,
You can’t avoid it for long.
Our Sikh friend does not believe in abstract notions. He is more adept at analyzing the material and self evident. Sword (or rather kirpan) worship is the highest level of abstraction he could possibly reach. But as the saying goes: who comes by the sword does by the sword. Also: God is not found in (brute) force, but in (ethical) Truth. And the man who used both these expressions, while talking to his soldiers, was himself an embodiment of warrior virtues: a hero, a ruler and a Saint.
This is what makes a people superior: the ability to produce higher insight and defend it against brute force. Just getting more gibs through the sword does not free you from life and death.
The most common male lineage haplogroup among the Punjabis is R1a1a, which is VERY, VERY common among the Slavs.
Only among the higher caste. Our Sikh friend being a Jatt makes this Y haplogroup attribution unlikely. Before becoming Sikh, the Jatts were basically Chudra, perhaps Vaishya for some of them. BTW it shows in his comments: a very strong attachment to coarse material aspects of Sikh tradition, no respect at all towards the subtle and spiritual aspects of his Faith.
I remember what was predicted in case of 3 degree global warming was that the Amazon would turn into a semi-arid savannah, the Sahara would move northwards, so the Sahel would become wetter while Spain and Sicily and Southern Italy would turn into a desert, and China and Northern India would largely dry up because the Himalayan glaciers would melt, and Northern China will largely dry up.
Eshed acknowledged that his claims, which he offered with no evidence, might appear outlandish, but said he believes humanity will gradually come to accept them as true, and that some people may already have seen the light.
“If I came up with what I was saying five years ago today, I would have been hospitalized,” he said. “Until today, every place that I approached in the academy with this, they said, the guy has lost his mind.”
Our Sikh friend does not believe in abstract notions. He is more adept at analyzing the material and self evident. Sword (or rather kirpan) worship is the highest level of abstraction he could possibly reach. But as the saying goes: who comes by the sword does by the sword. Also: God is not found in (brute) force, but in (ethical) Truth.
Looking at what I think are Indian/Asian religious patterns exemplifies the difference between them and us. Whether it is Italian Renaissance or Palaiologan Byzantine art, there is almost always a striving for the impossible whereas Indian/Asian art is intricate and somewhat pleasing to the eye but ultimately mundane and trivial.
And why exactly were they nice enough to allow an independence question in Galicia?
In Galicia the anti-Communist sentiment existed earlier and overcame the semi-free conditions such that the independence question, barred in the rest of the country, was placed on the ballot by local authorities.
“The 1990 elections have been accurately described as “semi-free.” They also occurred during the course of the Communists’ fall in popularity but before that fall had accelerated.”
Interesting. In any case, though, they were still sufficiently free for local nationalists to win them in the Baltics, Moldova, Armenia, and Georgia, no?
I don’t know details about other republics. In Ukrainian hardliners had taken over and purged others in the 1970, so that the place was more of a hardliners stringing in the 80s.
Because the terms of the Ukrainian parliament’s sovereignty declaration would have been the negotiating position of the Ukrainian SSR at the start of negotiations with the center (Moscow) over a new union treaty. However, these terms would not have necessarily been the negotiating position of the Ukrainian SSR at the end of these negotiations
A lot of rather wild speculations about voter motivations. Reality was much simpler: people were given the option of voting for de facto independence and they overwhelmingly did so.
It’s worth noting that when the 1991 August coup attempt occurred in Moscow, Kravchuk, unlike Yeltsin, does not actually appear to have actively opposed this coup
Kravchuk has been a Communist insider.
Do you have figures? I’d guess some small % of hardcore anti-Soviets would have boycotted rather than take part in any vote organized by a state that they despised, even a vote in favor of de facto independence.
As is very clear from the final number in your link, your link shows numbers for the first question and not for the sovereignty question. So it’s irrelevant for the purposes of our discussion.
Do you think that most of the Muslims who supported Pakistan in the 1940s were likewise serious about separatism as opposed to preferring a stronger and better position for Muslims in a united India?
I did not know enough about Pakistan to speculate. I know enough about Ukraine to know that your implications (as Cohen’s) are rather bizarre.
Was the 1990s nightmare not foreseeable ahead of time? If not, why not?
Why would it be foreseeable, given that transition from Communism had not yet occurred anywhere?
At the very least, western Ukrainians learned something about good government from 150 years of Hapsburg rule.
Western Ukraine has been the best managed part of Ukraine since independence. But it is only 10% of the country and has not been able to impose its politicians and political culture on the entire country so it was not free of overall 1990s debacle.
If Galicia had been its own independent country in 1990 it probably would have joined the EU quickly like the others Central European countries did, and by now would have been about as prosperous as other small Central European countries such as Slovakia, maybe even more so (Lviv has a more educated workforce and Galicia would have been a gas exporter). But Galicians, like Kharkivites, prefer to be in their country Ukraine even if doing so is not always in their own economic interests. There has been no significant anti-Ukrainian separatist movement in Galicia.
There is a beauty in the notion of calming the chaos, isn’t it? I am reminded of the Hermetic notion of the external universe as a reflection of the internal universe – as above so below, as within so without – and so through our transmutation into our best selves, so we can come to bring about the best world around us, and I’ve always thought that to be true secret of the alchemist’s art in refining the pure from the dross.
You will notice that the resentment-ridden, anti-white sicko only mentioned African slavery, but of course even a ‘racist’ like me can allow that slavery is slavery and that’s it’s horrible and wrong. His anti-whitism inures him the suffering of over a million Europeans enslaved by Arab raiders, and the terror that coastal southern European communities lived in for centuries of Arab raiding parties.
One of my collaborators (a Canadian) told me that many Americans abroad pretend to be Canadians to avoid being blamed for the actions of the US government. There are many countries where it is better (sometimes even safer) to say that you are a Russian than an American.
We literally have archaeological towers of skulls from Mexico. European colonists and imperialists were fairly scrupulous in their recordings of the customs of the many natives they came across.
Somehow they failed to record virtually total genocide of indigenous peoples in North America. More people were killed by bullets and deliberately spread disease or starved to death then Aztecs and Maya combined managed to kill during centuries of their rule.
Barbary pirates were Arabized Berbers led by Turks. Calling them Arabs is a misnomer.
Other than that I agree with your comment. Slavery is slavery, whether of Blacks or Whites or Chinese. BTW, the words slave in english and esclave in french are directly derived from the Slovene and Sklaviny ethnonym.
Perhaps “US signed deal with ALIEN Galactic Federation” is a metaphor for America’s relation with Jews and Israel and a message to China and Russia that they have not been offered a similar deal by the ALIEN Galactic Federation.
China and Russia that they have not been offered a similar deal by the ALIEN Galactic Federation.
The earliest description of a “small gray” Alien was given in the novel “Red Star” by Bogdanov Malinovsky written after 1905 (attempted) Russisb revolution and published around 1908. The main character is contacted by an Allien and taken on a ride in a space ship to this Alien’s home planet which the main character thinks is Mars (hence the title of the book).
The space ship is moved by “by energy of decay of matter” (published in 1908!). Aliens live in a collectivist society where private property has been erased long ago and where everything is planned and controlled by computers (published in 1908!). The Aliens are nearly completely genderless (published in 1908!).
Now have a look at current societal trends…
Ah before I forget, Bogdanov Malinovsky competed with Lenin for the leadership of the Bolsheviks. He was the one who suggested the red star as a symbol of the Communist movement.
When the revolution succeeded, he abandoned active politics and concentrated on scientific work
I always wondered how did this come about? Not from Latin. Slave in Greek is δούλος and σκλάβος. Which came first and what is the etymology of σκλάβος? The oldest Greek text where σκλάβος was used?
I believe that one beef-eater would be victorious over a hundred beef-abstainers, even if that one beef-eater got his nourishment from the slimey, reprocessed concoction, known as a Big Mac, which is probably only 10% beef, and 90% hog entrails.
If my memory serves me well the first to mention Sklavins was Jordanes in his Getica, written around mid-sixth century AD. He also wrote about Antes in conjunction with Sklavins. IFAIK the first to mention Antes was Tacitus. Procopius also wrote about Slavs and Antes in the six century, but I do not think he mentioned Sklavins.
More people were killed by bullets and deliberately spread disease or starved to death then Aztecs and Maya combined managed to kill during centuries of their rule
Usual nonsense. Deaths from disease were overwhelmingly non deliberate in nature and typically preceded first contact. Even the infamous and isolated smallpox blanket case at Fort Erie was noneffective. That leaves “killing by bullets,” which may have been done by Natives to other Natives to a greater extent than by Europeans upon natives. The typical pattern was that the first tribe to get guns would use them to settle scores against their longstanding enemy tribes. You dehumanize natives when you deny them their human warlike nature and portray them merely as these totally peaceful victims.
The conservative estimate of people sacrificed by Aztecs is about 10,000 per year (estimates go as high as 100,000). That is, 100,000 people harvested for sacrifice over 10 years, a million total over 100 years until the horrified Spaniards ended this practice and the demon-worship underlying it. There is a reason why, when the small Spanish force arrived to erase the Aztecs, it was joined by large numbers of natives.
In contrast, the dreaded Spanish Inquisition totaled some 6,000 victims over its 300 year application.
Solid points, still the thrust of AnonTN’s comment is solid. He rightly highlights the dastardly behavior of the western expansionists. This can most clearly be seen by contrasting it with Russian behavior, which never encroached upon any people or territory not rightfully its own.
Been thinking about the theater – traditionally, it is said to have a lot of superstitions.
I’ve always dismissed this as being a bit of humor in the face of stage fright, but lately I’ve been wondering if this view is wrong. Maybe, it is explained by the natural personality characteristics of actors – their political compasses, and that they really are a naturally superstitious lot.
It’s been noted how many actors or creative people seem to have a leftward bent. It is also been observed how modern political discourse is dominated by the Left’s belief in invisible forces, in hexes, such as it is common for primitive Africans to believe in.
Perhaps, in olden times, they worked theses superstitions into the stories they told – like ghosts, witches, and elves – and this helped amuse people and make them a success. Now, they are working their new superstition into stories: racism, only it is not as amusing.
Give the Peruvians a break. Their Catholicism cannot be separated from worship of the Sun God. The Indian and mixed part of the population are not exactly Christian.
On my visit to Peru I learned two things:
1. Indigenous people resent being called Indians. They rightly point out that they have nothing to do with India and cannot be held responsible for the stupidity of Columbus and many other European explorers. Peruvians say that they should be called Quechua people (that’s their prevailing language), or each tribe should be called by its name.
2. As compared to Mexico, there is remarkably little European blood in the population. In Cusco and in Amazonia ~98% of the people look indigenous, and even in Lima no more than 10% show any European ancestry in their phenotype.
Maybe subjective preferences and cultural biases are at work here?
Personally I have enjoyed both eastern and western spiritual art, but I admit that Roman and Hellenic art is often superb. But Orthodox icons have often been too rigid and formulaic for my taste. Still I wouldnt egoistically or chauvinistically claim that they are ultimately trivial or something, even though I am not at all inspired by them.
Mundane is okay point, for Christian everything non relating to the Christian religion is mundane, so its just natural that these pieces of art are mundane from your viewpoint. And so it should be, lest you not lose the cohesion of your faith.
We descended from “Purgatorius”, who looked like below. This my glorious ancestor – some kind of squirrel.
Which reminds me of a question I had for AltanBakshi or Ano4:
When did our ancestors acquire the capability of experiencing Nirvana, escaping the cycle of life and death and all that?
Could Neanderthals (who were able to interbreed with homo sapiens sapiens and had a bigger brain that ours) potentially reach those goals? And homo erectus (whose most evolved types appear to have also interbred with us)? Pithecanthropi?
In other words, when did exactly the “Nirvana-capable” gen mutation/s take place? Is any research being conducted to identify this gen (or genes)? If we had to wait for evolution to produce a Nirvana-capable species, then there MUST be a gene or collection of genes that make it possible.
And what if natural selection or environmental factors had never produced this mutation? Would all living creatures be condemned to exist in the fateful never ending cycle?
I don’t think I can ask the Christian commenters here a comparable question about heaven because their Holly Books spell the answer clearly for them. Those Christians who continue to take the Old Testament seriously cannot possibly accept evolution. And those who are able to see that the OT is just a collection of incoherent fables but somehow manage to believe in the rest of the Christian canon, must think that salvation is only possible through Christ so all those billions of creatures, human or not, who didn’t manage to be born before Jesus Christ (or at least Moses) must have ended up in hell.
Antarctica!!! What kind of crazy Indian nationalist made that map?!
But, in all seriousness, shouldn’t India be red? Are we going to ignore the history of conquest there? And, isn’t it implicit, as things currently stand, that Muslims will take over India? India was at least 15.5% Abramhamic in 2001. According to some 2018 numbers that I’ve seen that went up to over 20.0%. In another 10 years, it will probably converge with SK rates, only SK has a more indigenous flavor to their churches.
When did our ancestors acquire the capability of experiencing Nirvana, escaping the cycle of life and death and all that?
Hard to give definite answer. The problem with animals is that its hard for them to understand causality, yes they can understand simple things, they feel passion and attachment, aversion and so on, but its not like they can put together thoughts and analyze their situation.
When such beings arise who are capable of analysis and have capacity for logical thought, then there is always a chance that in suitable circumstances some of them can achieve the state of Nirvana.
Could Neanderthals (who were able to interbreed with homo sapiens sapiens and had a bigger brain that ours) potentially reach those goals? And homo erectus (whose most evolved types appear to have also interbred with us)? Pithecanthropi?
I dont know, even most humans are not capable of enlightenment, but its not like we have any magical obstacles or objections against them reaching the Nirvana. In Buddhism there is concept of so called “central lands.” Where there are laws and people can freely practice their religion, in other words there is somekind of civilization. Its not maybe impossible, but its very rare that Buddhas appear in lands that are tribal and chaotic.
In other words, when did exactly the “Nirvana-capable” gen mutation/s take place? Is any research being conducted to identify this gen (or genes)? If we had to wait for evolution to produce a Nirvana-capable species, then there MUST be a gene or collection of genes that make it possible.
Is there a specific gene that makes us to desire something, or is there a specific gene that makes us to avert non pleasant things?
You try too hard, it seems that the rigid and constrained catholicism of your youth has just transformed into rigid and constrained form of atheism.
And what if natural selection or environmental factors had never produced this mutation? Would all living creatures be condemned to exist in the fateful never ending cycle?
Do you mean that without Buddhism life would have continued forever on this planet? Strange presupposition.
Funnily Buddhists are already asking much more complicated questions than this stuff.
There is discussion among us if artificial intelligence could achieve Nirvana.
They resent being called Indios because it’s a term of racial disparagement, not because of Spaniards’ geographical errors. Of course, they’re not going to tell you that, probably because they don’t like being reminded of it themselves, hence the Columbus cover story.
I think this sub-thread illustrates the cause of problems Europeans have dig themselves into (and it started already in Roman Empire).
We simply are not content with doing our own business but for some reason want to spread universalist values at the side. I understand why one may see colonizing America as a good thing, because it spread our kind to other continent and brought huge fortunes back home. But justifying it because it ended human sacrifice by Aztecs? Why should it concern us? Why should we care how other people and civilizations are behaving? In the rare occasions when it really is our concern (like slave raids in med) the problem can usually solved by military means without attaching any soft “values” to it.
This universalism has now IMHO came home to roost. Europe has largely exhausted barbarian hordes to convert to “civilization” and thus has targeted the energy toward its own native population. The basic formula is the same – in earlier times it was paganism, human sacrifice, slavery – now it is xenophobia, racism, xenophobia etc.
About how my “faith” looks, we don’t want pussies:
ਸੋਫੀ ਸ਼ੂੰਮ ਪੰਥ ਨਹਿ ਰਾਖਨ । ਕਿਯ ਕਿਸ ਦਾਰੁਨ ਕੇ ਅਭਿਲਾਖਨ । [The Guru commanded] “I will not keep misers and teetotalers in my Panth, [my Singhs] will have the desire for vicious warfare.”
Regarding beef, US per cap beef consumption went up as it lost ground to USSR. It won Cold War as it came down, there’s also the whole Aryan angle & horse vs cow slaughter as part of conversion.
Re Arab slave trade, Kendi mentions it as not being racialized and white power being a contemporary issue while Arabs are poor w/o oil.
Re Aztec that same progressive narrative is applied to racism/patriarchy, GL.
Ano4 you have no clue what Warrior virtues or any other are, you’re a christcuck..
Overall, I quote CRT because it’s the “new” thing. Even Karlin, says education for females is good and to deny it would be immoral; despite tfr implications.
In few decades the Slavs and Mongol mischlings (but I repeat myself) will be running over each other to declare how “POC” they are; Karlin ahead of the curve on this.
Funny thing about white fragility, you all use the exact same strategies outlined there.
“For many whites, the naming of white racial power is the issue rather than its existence.”
p. 96
I’m not really bothered if a bunch of potential White Nationalist Terrorists hate Sikhi,
Why should we care how other people and civilizations are behaving?
If my neighbor is making a mistake I should in kindness correct him. If he is ripping out the beating heart of someone in his household as a sacrifice to a Sun Demon I should try to stop him.
Europe has largely exhausted barbarian hordes to convert to “civilization” and thus has targeted the energy toward its own native population. The basic formula is the same – in earlier times it was paganism, human sacrifice, slavery – now it is xenophobia, racism, xenophobia etc
There are still plenty of problems outside of Europe that Europeans could fix if they had the will to do so. You are correct that the self-destruction we are witnessing is a perversion and misapplication of a formula that had once brought much good into the world. The problem is not the formula itself but the perversion. A Christian culture without Christianity is a very dangerous and aversive thing.
Is the notion of free will the source of much suffering in the world? If things develop out of inner necessity, then our belief that we can control events may be just a fiction that leads to pointless frustration.
Our fights, our passions, our anxieties, are based on the idea that things can be other than they are.
If something like strong physicalist determinism is true we can’t choose or change anything about our beliefs about free will anyway. Also passions, anxieties and conflict will all be determined to happen by laws of nature, not caused by ideas we may or may not have, these would constitute some kind of epiphenomena to the real causal agent.
Agreed. No one can change his ideas about anything.
“Learning” is bringing into full consciousness what you have always thought. We never get anything new from books. They only tell us what we already knew but couldn’t articulate.
That is why you cannot persuade anyone of anything. You can only discover those who already agree with you.
So, if you encounter the idea that there is no free will, and it doesnt strike you as something you have always really known, then you are one of those who are not predetermined to think that way.
So cheer up! There is never any reason to think other than what your heart desires. Indeed, there is not the possibility of doing so.
As for materialism, I reject the division between the physical and the spiritual as outdated. They are the same thing, Science has shown that go deep down enough in the atom, and there is quite literally nothing there. The physical is something we don’t know doing we doing know what.
They resent being called Indios because it’s a term of racial disparagement,
The word “Indio” has strong negative connotations in Mexico. Peruvian society is a lot less racist (maybe because, in contrast to Mexico, the majority of the people there have indigenous blood). Besides, the term “Quechua” means exactly the same thing, and they have no objection to it.
Yea, like when Germans raped and enslaved Slavs for centuries; there were many benefits to the world, and it brought you to such a state of ‘enlightenment’ you get turned on by it now|| 🙂
“For many whites, the naming of white racial power is the issue rather than its existence.”
p. 96
I doubt it is for most of the readers of the Unz forum.
The only thing is often Europeans don’t think in terms of generic ‘white’ racial power (more an American thing) but in the power of particular ethnic groups; Russian ethnic power, Ukrainian, Italian ethnic power etc. Only progressives will think these are bad or unnatural things in themselves or be in denial about their existence.
DiAngelo and her ‘field’ of research have plenty of explanations of how to forestall criticism of their ideas by appealing to the principle that any challenge or rejection of their various claims and assertions proves them true (basically a question begging fallacy). Things will get interesting though if the CRT crowd in the US try to use it as a guide to describing and reshaping international relations.
Yes. I suspect that there is more of the native culture surviving in the Andes than the world in general knows. It is a place that I would like to visit.
it seems that the rigid and constrained catholicism of your youth
No, not really LOL
My mother is quite religious but my father wasn’t. He decided to send us to that private Catholic school because we would be taught in Basque and besides they were introducing modern pedagogical methods.
In fact, Father Superior took it upon himself to teach us (a mixed class of boys and girls) sexual education. We had a lot of fun learning sex from a celibate priest 🙂
However, I know that you have misgivings about Jesuits so I must warn you that I was born very close to the birthplace of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. They have a nice sanctuary there and the Pope once came to visit it so a group of people in my hometown organized a march through the mountains to go and see him. A friend of mine and I took advantage of the occasion to paint some graffiti on their route mocking them. The flock of sheep runs to meet their shepherd, baaa…. something along those lines.
Now I wouldn’t engage in that childish behavior. I have rather learned to feel proud that important people like St Ignatius were my countrymen.
My school wasn’t run by the Jesuits though. It was run by the Passionists.
Funnily Buddhists are already asking much more complicated questions than this stuff.
No, not really, again. One is almost an inevitable consequence of the other. Were primitive humans capable of following our religious beliefs? –> What will happen to our religious beliefs when humanity is much more advanced than now?
But I do agree with you that all of this is very basic stuff. I’ve never understood how so many religious people live their lives without ever asking themselves this type of questions. Incidentally, this is something that I remember we openly discussed in our religion classes: if we meet advanced aliens and see that they don’t believe in God, should we abandon religion?
Perhaps the problem was that our religion teachers were not rigid enough and gave us too much freedom to think “wrong” ideas.
BTW, Mikel, you’ve managed to piss off someone in comment 470 for no other reason than politely asking reasonable questions, so congratulations 🙂 You have graduated, my friend. Use your new powers wisely.
(Sorry to AP, who I have nothing whatsoever against and find a polite and thoughtful commenter)
you’ve managed to piss off someone in comment 470 for no other reason than politely asking reasonable questions
Yes. Strange, that. But I am under no illusions, I still have a lot to learn from you.
This is the problem of discussing religious matters openly. You’re going to upset some people. But if you cannot discuss religion in an anonymous venue like this where intelligent religious people post regularly, where can you do it? You may remember that I generally try to avoid doing it in real life because I don’t want to upset or even less, dissuade people who are close to me.
I don’t agree with your assessment of this commenter though. You clearly haven’t touched his wrong buttons yet.
Changing the subject, the other day I crossed Nevada through US-Route 50 (the so-called loneliest road in America). One of the most amazing rides I remember in the US. It follows the trail used in the 19th century by the Pony Express riders through deserts, mountains, dunes, plains, juniper and pine forests,… so much natural beauty. Hope you’ll also enjoy your planned December trip to the West.
In Galicia the anti-Communist sentiment existed earlier and overcame the semi-free conditions such that the independence question, barred in the rest of the country, was placed on the ballot by local authorities.
Through mass signatures and mass petitions for this question?
I don’t know details about other republics. In Ukrainian hardliners had taken over and purged others in the 1970, so that the place was more of a hardliners stringing in the 80s.
Hardline Communists?
A lot of rather wild speculations about voter motivations. Reality was much simpler: people were given the option of voting for de facto independence and they overwhelmingly did so.
Please see my comments below.
Kravchuk has been a Communist insider.
Yes, apparently more this than a Ukrainian patriot. Or maybe simply enough of a realist to avoid risking his own skin and life.
As is very clear from the final number in your link, your link shows numbers for the first question and not for the sovereignty question. So it’s irrelevant for the purposes of our discussion.
You’re correct that this question got 81.7% of the vote in Ukraine in March 1991:
“Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of a Union of Soviet Sovereign States on the basis on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine?”
Meanwhile, though, this question (the one which had the map with the data for above) got 71.5% of the vote in Ukraine in March 1991:
Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?
I don’t know the oblast breakdown for the first referendum here, but I suspect that Ukrainians outside of Kiev and the far west were willing to support both a new union based on de facto independence and a new union based on vaguer principles (“rights and freedom” and all of that) whereas the far west and Kiev were much more wary about supporting a new union based on vaguer principles but were willing to support a new union based on de facto independence. This does suggest that the far west and Kiev were determined to secure Ukrainian independence but that people in the rest of Ukraine might have viewed independence as something that would have been nice to have, but also something that was not necessarily essential and thus as something that might have been possible to compromise on with the center (Moscow).
Is my interpretation here a particularly bad one?
I did not know enough about Pakistan to speculate. I know enough about Ukraine to know that your implications (as Cohen’s) are rather bizarre.
Well, please see my comments right above.
Anyway, though, for what it’s worth, I actually do fully support Ukraine’s pro-Western course because I do think that the West should be able to claim a part of the East Slavic world for itself–and of course it certainly significantly helps that this is what the Ukrainian people themselves actually want. I would hope that Belarus would likewise eventually follow Ukraine’s course in regards to this, possibly several decades from now. Interestingly enough, Ukraine’s refusal to participate in the Eurasian Economic Union allows this union to become genuinely Eurasian in the long(er)-run if both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will eventually join it since this will likely eventually allow this union to have a roughly equal number of both European and Asian (including Central Asian) peoples–thus making this union genuinely Eurasian. This would not have been possible with Ukraine’s huge European population distorting the population scales in this union in favor of Europeans–thus severely undercutting this union’s claim of being Eurasian.
My own interest in this question is more related to the fact that I’m trying to figure out just how inevitable Ukrainian independence actually was with a “point of departure” (from real life) in, say, 1980 or so.
Why would it be foreseeable, given that transition from Communism had not yet occurred anywhere?
The collapse/break-up of Austria-Hungary and the partition of India have both already previously shown what can happen when a unified territory becomes divided, no?
Western Ukraine has been the best managed part of Ukraine since independence. But it is only 10% of the country and has not been able to impose its politicians and political culture on the entire country so it was not free of overall 1990s debacle.
If Galicia had been its own independent country in 1990 it probably would have joined the EU quickly like the others Central European countries did, and by now would have been about as prosperous as other small Central European countries such as Slovakia, maybe even more so (Lviv has a more educated workforce and Galicia would have been a gas exporter). But Galicians, like Kharkivites, prefer to be in their country Ukraine even if doing so is not always in their own economic interests. There has been no significant anti-Ukrainian separatist movement in Galicia.
Frankly, I suspect that Galicia might have developed a pseudo-separatist movement in 2013-2014 had Yanukovych succeeded in crushing the Maidan protests in Kiev during this time but not in Galicia and Volhynia. In such a scenario, Galicians would not have formally aimed to secede from Ukraine; rather, they would have aimed to overthrow Yanukovych. However, because Yanukovych’s hold on power in Kiev and everywhere to the east of Kiev would have been very secure, a mass decision by Galicians to rebel against Yanukovych in this scenario would have been tantamount to a de facto Galician secession from the rest of Ukraine. In such a scenario, I suspect that both Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr would have been major battlegrounds–comparable to Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and Mariupol in real life.
But anyway, Yeah, Galicians certainly deserve credit for pushing Ukraine towards the right path and in the right direction. Ironically, annexing western Ukraine was one of the best things that Stalin ever did. It unfortunately and tragically resulted in decades of misery for western Ukrainians, but it also allowed western Ukraine to become the necessary nationalistic core for the rest of Ukraine, thus preventing Ukraine from slipping back into a state of Imperial Moskali Domination (TM) in 2013-2014. 🙂
Working yourself to death voluntarily is pretty much a part of their culture plus Japan has a serious Yakuza problem organized crime is woven into their society like the Mafia in Sicily.
It’s a fascinating read, the author blames the Olympus Scandal and even suggests the massive real estate bust in the 80s-90s from which Japan never recovered on the Yakuza.
The Spaniards didn’t come to the new world armed with chemists and microbiologists. The natives died of disease because of factor beyond the control of the Spanish. Anyhow, I only dispute the claim that European accounts of human sacrifice in the new world were somehow misleading. If you want to argue the Spanish colonies in the new world were bad for the natives, that’s fine by me.
So you are a Basque, interesting, yes quite interesting people and history.
No, not really, again. One is almost an inevitable consequence of the other. Were primitive humans capable of following our religious beliefs? –> What will happen to our religious beliefs when humanity is much more advanced than now?
The religion adapts alongside humanity or it will disappear? What else?
Here is a depiction of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, during his ascetic phase, before he achieved the state of awakening and established our religion. These statues are probably from 3rd or 4th century. Though Buddha later understood the folly of such extreme asceticism, he always wanted himself test and see what results different kind of exertions and practices produce, during those ancient times, there were many spiritual teachers who claimed that by extreme exertion and asceticism one can achieve spiritual states that are beyond the mundane existence of common man. So Buddha himself put those practices into test, so great was his manly willpower / Virya. Empirically he proved himself that self mortification does not produce results on the path. Soon someone is going to say that it should had been self evident to him, but to them I will say, how it could have been when there was no modern science and land was full of such ascetics who claimed divine results from such practices?
Thankfully Buddha did not die after such fasting, thanks to a milkmaid named Sujata who gave him rice boiled in milk, so rice pudding? And Siddhartha gained his strength back and was inspired to create one of our core religious doctrines the Middle Way.
Agreed. No one can change his ideas about anything.
It’s these sort of baseless statements that make your posts tiresome to read. Who is really going to bothered to dispute a claim so detached from reality? Even if you meant it in the sense that determinism is true, there are better ways to state it so that the meaning is clearer.
So cheer up! There is never any reason to think other than what your heart desires. Indeed, there is not the possibility of doing so.
I think this perspective does people a disservice. If life has been good to you, it’s very easy to sit back and tell yourself that things are as they had to be and could only ever have been. But someone who has a had bad run of luck in life – a huge factor in life outcomes – would, if he accepted your reasoning, likely become inclined to think that his bad luck, and thus his suffering, will continue indefinitely, potentially permanently, thereby simply adding to his suffering.
I would argue a healthier perspective is to say we don’t know, and can’t ever know, for certain if determinism is true or not, and that it is therefore better to believe in free will. If you believe in free will and determinism is true, it doesn’t matter because the choice wasn’t yours to make anyway (it was something already decided billions of years ago). But if you believe in determinism while free will is true, then you may neglect to take certain actions that could improve your well-being because you falsely believed you were powerless to influence your life.
Though Buddha later understood the folly of such extreme asceticism
That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware that Buddha ever admitted an error. One of the things I’ve found off-putting about Buddhism – apart from finding certain claims about reality completely unconvincing – is that its teachings consist mostly of a series of overconfident assertions rather than arguments. In other words, just because Buddha said something is no reason to accept it as true.
OPCW whisteblowers were calling out the lies of ‘Assad gassing his own people’ war propaganda, which was trotted out to justify the continued occupation of Eastern Syria and the massive support of moderate headchoppers by Tel Aviv and its subcontractors in the West and MENA.
That not a single media outlet in the mainstream has covered this should tell you all that you need to know about the so-called “free and independent media”.
Both AaronB and Ano4? Buddhism isnt deterministic, yes some Hinayana schools are, but not the Mahayana. Not at all! Determinism is not far away from essentialism Ano4 and what else determinism is than grasping, and those who have grasping – do not have the view. Literally they dont understand anything about Dharma and Im not speaking in Prajna-Paramita sense.
Though I must raise my hat to AaronB for being logically consistent, to solve the problem of evil in such way is to me quite odd, but its even stranger that a Jew is proponent of such logic. Though I specifically laid these questions as traps to you. You have a potential be a good Buddhist, for your attachment to Jewishness is not an obstacle to you. Though Karma is never predetermined, its true that we suffer because of our karma, if one accepts this unpleasant truth, then one has accepted one of the major truths of Buddha.
In Dharma we are proponents of a Middle Way, its good and beneficial to love ones family and kin, but to think that ones nation or family has a permanent essence, or quality that makes it to have attributes that are always better and more special than those of other nations or families, that kind of thinking is a fetter, an obstacle, as is thinking that ones kin doesnt matter at all, both extremes lead to bad results.
We are proponents of dialectical method and love debating, we really do! Also Buddha admitted numerous times that he was wrong, even after attaining Nirvana. Few times he lost in a debate, like when he was against of admitting women to monkhood, and sometimes he lost by vote. He himself ordered that the highest authority in the monastic community is consensus. Buddha was adamant that all changes in Buddhist community are made by consensus.
We must remember that Buddha himself came from an aristocratic republic, where nobles voted who will be a king.
Buddhism isn’t deterministic, but it is thoroughly conditional. Because this is – that is, because a set of conditions arise – this phenomenon arises, because this set of conditions disappear – this phenomenon ceases. The web of conditions is encompassing the whole of the physical reality. The flow of conditions is going through cycles of arising and ceasing universes through times immemorial.
It is a complex, non-linear network of causal nodes in which each cause is also a consequence. The causes and consequences are interlinked and weighed in a very complex manner. It is ia dynamic system in a constant state of flux. Each life path is a non-linear flow of causality. At the same time, the basic fabric of reality is experienced as psycho-physical units of experience: the dharmas (small d), the whole experience and its adequate description being the Dharma (capital D).
If instead of using d/Dharma, we used quanta and/or bits the Western mind would probably accept this description as more or less adequate. The karma is then the causality linking the dharmas in both space and time. It is the law effecting the causal agents. It does not exist if causal agents do not exist. Each causal agent is a karmic construct. But regardless of terminology, the whole representation of things means that if enough necessary conditions are present, then something will happen, a causal agent will arise and effect the whole web of reality in a certain manner triggering a certain outcome.
In the 1930ies, the conditions for a major crisis in Europe were present. This crisis was partly due to the role played by international Jewry in the world affairs This crisis was to effect painful results upon different groups of people, with the Jewry being hardly hit because it was pivotal to several prior developments of European socioeconomic and political trends.
The main and most important cause of the calamity that befell the European Jewry was the disproportionate role played by the Jews in the worldwide Communist movement and especially in the Russian revolution. The Judeo-Bolshevism was the direct cause of Holocaust.
The Judeo-Bolshevism was itself a consequence of numerous causal links going back millenia and intertwined with the religious and socioeconomic evolution of the European populations. The Holocaust did not start in 1939, it was centuries in making.
The peaceful co-existence of the European gentiles and Jews has become impossible. Suffering was bound to follow for both of them.
Could this have been averted entirely? I don’t think so. Could it have played out in a different way, possibly yes. But these are rhetorical questions and hindsight is 20/20.
That not a single media outlet in the mainstream has covered this should tell you all that you need to know about the so-called “free and independent media”.
Your write well and eloquently and I mostly agree with you.
But Mahayana is not fatalistic, and are you sure that at closer analysis every causal agent is a Karmic construct? What about unconditioned phenomena? There are such dharmas and they affect our reality. There are Karmic tendencies not Karmic necessities.
By practicing pure perception and pure view, we see less and less phenomenas as something having fixed or even partially fixed nature, in ultimate analysis even conditionality disappears. Things could always have happened in a different way, nothing is fixed, not our nature, nor is our relations towards the past.
Buddhism is not about the historical Buddha. He is not some kind of Messiah or Godman. One sees the Tathagata etc.
In my opinion this is one extreme, its true that for Theravadas historical Buddha is much more important, but we too in Mahayana acknowledge that without him this cycle could have been without a Buddha, many peculiarities in our religion arise from the specific quirks and inventions of the current Buddha of our era, Siddhartha Gautama.
Because of his heroic struggle and exertion for countless lives, we now enjoy the fruits of his merit. Ano4 if one man has vast compassion and strives ceaselessly for the benefit of many, then such being has power to change the lives of humanity. We are not as collectivist as you possibly imply.
It can be said that the Buddhism is all about the free will that we possess, that we can by our own power defy the tides of karmical cycles and go against the stream, and forge our own path. Even Buddha said that his Dharma goes against stream of reality.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qQMMvv5UfS8/TdjHFqLetuI/AAAAAAAAACI/ZqulK3rhtgw/s1600/Bhavachakra.jpg
As you well know this is Bhavachakra painting, it is allegory of our cyclical existence, but always in these paintings there is Buddha outside of the cycle pointing at the moon, which means that he shows that the existence outside of the cycle is possible, that you dont need to a prisoner of the cycle.
To me its confusing that you think that your standards of beauty are somehow objectively definitive. By the way that sculpture is not from the 4th century, but from the 2nd and possibly made by Hellenes, and I agree its not a beautiful statue, nor it was made to be.
I agree with most of what you wrote. One has to explain according to the level o the audience. There are advanced topics, such as madhyamaka and shunyata that should be discussed only when the four noble truths and the eightfold path are understood.
For the level with which we are dealing in our discussion, it is sufficient to clearly state that Avidya – existential ignorance – is the fundamental cause of becoming and that becoming itself is intertwined with stress and angst, leading to suffering. Removing ignorance decreases suffering tremendously.
For the rest of what you wrote there are people who are wiser than I am and who have explained it better and more concisely than I will ever be able:
Also, Bodhidhama has said that once a mindstream produces the will to Liberation, then sooner or later Liberation will follow. It could take a second or a thousand kalpas, but it is bound to happen.
I have faith in Bodhidhama’s teaching. I know that if I apply his recommendations, outlined in the Treaty of the two Entrances, then one day my wrong views will be replaced with wisdom and I will leave the path of sorrow and death.
When a culture and its people are healthy then beauty is quite objective. Italian Renaissance paintings all differ but they adhere to certain definitions of beauty. Bach’s works differ but they adhere to certain definitions of beauty. Compare this to paintings of Pollock. They all differ but they are joke. There is no identifiable beauty in them unless the observer is a serious criminal. Likewise with rap music. These are not the products of healthy people.
Well, no free will can actually be a very freeing and consoling idea. It relieves you of responsibility and regret, and futile struggle.
I find it an idea that especially appealing to those who had a bad life. Dont be tortured by regret or a sense of failure. It could have been no other way.
The Buddha, who offered this idea, and the Greek philosophers, thought it was therapeutic, as do I.
It is unpopular in the modern world. If you dont like it, and it depresses you, then you need different ideas to live by, and that’s OK too.
Buddha started out as an extreme ascetic, realized that led nowhere, and stopped all effort, which led to Enlightenment. Surrender.
But if you believe in determinism while free will is true, then you may neglect to take certain actions that could improve your well-being because you falsely believed you were powerless to influence your life.
You don’t know whats predetermined, so you should always make a reasonable effort. Just, no regrets, and no guilt, and no struggling against the natural trend when it becomes clear.
Well said, I envy your swift progress on the path, and to think that last summer I didnt take your Buddhism seriously.
Also, Bodhidhama has said that once a mindstream produces the will to Liberation, then sooner or later Liberation will follow. It could take a second or a thousand kalpas, but it is bound to happen.
I dont know, we have been for eternity in Samsara already. Btw why you call him Bodhidhama and not Bodhidharma?
Or maybe AaronB thinks in some odd and complicated way that Jews and antisemites are predestined to be in an eternal dialectic relationship and struggle, if so then that kind of thinking is very bad and it will be like a self fulfilling curse for him.
Buddha started out as an extreme ascetic, realized that led nowhere, and stopped all effort, which led to Enlightenment. Surrender.
No, he just understood that such extreme self mortification will not bring positive results, he struggled quite much after his ascetic period, just not in a physically painful way.
The collapse/break-up of Austria-Hungary and the partition of India have both already previously shown what can happen when a unified territory becomes divided, no?
The break-up of Austria-Hungary was a geopolitical disaster for those small nations but it did not result in a 90’s style economic collapse/gangster takeover.
Frankly, I suspect that Galicia might have developed a pseudo-separatist movement in 2013-2014 had Yanukovych succeeded in crushing the Maidan protests in Kiev during this time but not in Galicia and Volhynia.
Possible, and there would have been messy resistance in the Center. If so, it would have been a Taiwan-style “we are the free Ukrainians” situation rather than a movement towards an independent non-Ukrainian, Galician identity.
Everything comes into the world with its opposite. The individual thing does not exist.
If Jews exist, there must be those who hate them. While enemies on the surface, they are actually embracing in a symbiotic dance. They are frenemies.
Seeing this, I can be humane to the antisemite, understand his suffering, understand he is necessarily trapped in a one sided view, and not condemn him completely. He too is a necessary part of the whole.
If I thought the antisemite had no right to exist, I might want to put him in an extermination camp.
The desire to see one side win completely, always leads to aggression.
No, he just understood that such extreme self mortification will not bring positive results, he struggled quite much after his ascetic period, just not in a physically painful way.
You are free to read the story your own way. To me, the significance of the story is that, after trying hard to overcome his nature, he achieved enlightenment only when he surrendered to it.
The Buddha’s enigmatic smile, and the look of peace on his face, suggests someone who has gone beyond struggle, and has learned harmony even in a world of apparent conflict, which he sees beyond.
You still think the apparent conflict is real. To which I say, you do as you must, and what is nectar for one mas is poison for another.
Of course I believe in progress. The fastest way to improve is to be critical of the world you live in, with an eye to change your circumstances, rather than just resign yourself to the inadequate status quo.
I’ve found the unironic future dream world for AaronB, except it doesn’t even need to have technology to aid it since he only wants us to “enlighten” ourselves into its state.
If you were a careful reader of my philosophy, you’d know I think we are already in our future perfect dream world, and always have been, and there is no need to go anywhere or do anything.
I hold by the Mahayana Buddhist saying, that the world of Samsara and Nirvana, are one.
We have only to realize this.
But the average man cannot understand this philosophy.
You are not okay in the head if you think that your thinking is not rigidly dualistic.
“Dont make gods into demons,” is an old Buddhist saying. Get help, try to think yourself just as a human, forget all about jews and antisemites, even just for a moment. You are just reifying your mental patterns by hanging out on such sites as this. Its not doing any good for you.
Non dualism is a tough concept for most to understand. Its subtle.
Most people, like you, think its monism. Differences get dissolved. Antisemites and Jews lose their differences and become one.
But monism, as opposed to dualism, sets up another duality, another choice, another preference.
Wherever there is choice, there is duality. When both are accepted, you have transcended duality.
The issue with you is, that you are avery classical good and evil dualist, and positivist, who would have been very at home in Christianity, or less comfortably but still suitably, in Theravada Buddhism. For some personal reason, you have sought refuge in a tradition that is a poor fit.
On the popular level, of course, Mahayana Budddjism has always been dualistic, and you can practice it on that level. But it has always been at least less dualistic than most other traditions, so even on this level, it isn’t a good fit for someone who is intensely, fiercely dualistic and positivist.
But sometimes, people choose the tradition that is the worst fit for their qualities, and then try and change it to suit them. That happens more than enough times, that there is a mystery there.
This is the problem of discussing religious matters openly. You’re going to upset some people. But if you cannot discuss religion in an anonymous venue like this where intelligent religious people post regularly, where can you do it? You may remember that I generally try to avoid doing it in real life because I don’t want to upset or even less, dissuade people who are close to me
Exactly. Its rude to do it in real life, and mean, but if we’re setting up a space to have intellectual discussions, then that’s the right place.
Or should there just never be discussions on controversial subjects? In some societies, that’s what its like.
Should we become such a society? It seems we are.
Humans are humans. We are weak, frail creatures who can’t handle too much truth. We cling to beliefs and illusions like life preservers.
Every few generations, people become more open to discussing controversial ideas, then it closes up again. We are in a closing up period.
I don’t blame a frail and frightened humanity too much, I have pity for them and wish them the best.
We are just frightened animals.
Changing the subject, the other day I crossed Nevada through US-Route 50 (the so-called loneliest road in America). One of the most amazing rides I remember in the US. It follows the trail used in the 19th century by the Pony Express riders through deserts, mountains, dunes, plains, juniper and pine forests,… so much natural beauty. Hope you’ll also enjoy your planned December trip to the West.
You lucky bastard! That sounds so amazing, I envy you. I wish I could be there right now.
I hope to be leaving by the end of month. I’m looking into winter bags – not as expensive as I thought, like six or seven hundred for a decent-20 bag.
I’m interpreting it into its appropriate, nonsensical result: a totally meaningless existence of immobility trapped in boxes(metaphorical or otherwise).
There’s a reason why I believe in struggle as beauty.
Even pure, unfiltered madness is more charming than that.
According to Mahayana Buddhism, this is already the nature of the world. The world is an illusion, and our passions are being evoked by phantoms.
We already are sitting on couches plugged into VR headsets having our dopamine centers stimulated by unreal things.
Except, there is no reality to awake to. Nothing is real. Its a scary notion for some, having nothing to stand on.
But we might be happier and more carefree, if we saw life this way. Life can be a true adventure, we can be like madmen who venture all, careless of our lives. We can become fearless.. But we are not free to choose this vision- this vision chooses some happy few. For the rest, it is almost cruel to expose them to it.
The issue is, what is truly fun. What is satisfying for its own sake – intrinsically satisfying. Those things, we should organize our life around.
Another aspect of the Mahayana Buddhist vision is, that this world, just as it is, not quite real, is already perfect. We have only to see it on that level. That is why, Nirvana is Samsara, as the sutras say.
Working for a future perfection, is a delusion, in which we throw away our lives. People who live by this illusion, are always the worst advertisement for it, because they are notably unhappy and depressed.
Ironically, such people always try and coerce the happy people into their system. Enraged by happiness, they cannot stand that some people are happy and free.
The article is a bit dated (~3 weeks) but it contains a good overview of the recent armenoid-azeri war. It also delves into debates such as if Russian AA is overrated given how easily Azeris dominated the skies with drones (short answer: no).
I’m a very unintelligent person, but it took me literally 40 seconds to capture the literal destination of what you’re trying to say in image format. Lovely.
And now, if you’re so clever, you’ll also realize the innate ridiculousness of your commentary.
Or, you will probably continue to pose on your imagined wisdom. I’m sure it means a lot for you, and you’re very attached to it. And that’s why you feel this desperate need to ramble on it endlessly to us and advertise it(primarily, of course, to yourself).
Because surely, Buddhism has nothing said in regards to attachments.
The religion adapts alongside humanity or it will disappear? What else?
Yes, we are in full agreement here.
Religions have been concocted by different human groups since time immemorial in order to give meaning to the puzzle of human existence and death. They obviously needed to be adapted to the cultural traits of the societies where they appeared or else they wouldn’t have had any success.
But that is what we see today as well. Scientific progress and a better understanding of nature has made old religions obsolete and more and more people, especially in the advanced countries, find themselves unable to believe in them. It’s not that people like me are immoral or victims of any satanic plot, as you suggested in a previous thread. We are victims of the fact that religions have not been able to adapt to a time of widespread critical thinking like this.
Religions have probably reached a dead end, just like witchcraft and alchemy did before them.
That Aliens and God stuff is non matter for us.
Yes, it does matter if you substitute God by reincarnation, for example. As a matter of fact, I think that if an Alien civilization much more advanced than us ever makes contact, they will be less likely to believe in living creatures becoming new living creatures after death through some esoteric mechanism than in the existence of God.
BTW, your idea that genes are unrelated to the questions that I posed above is wrong. I actually think that genetics is deeply ingrained in the whole idea of reincarnation. The fact that a human may reincarnate as a lower form of life implies that he will not be able to achieve Nirvana or Enlightenment in that state. But what differentiates a living creature from another if not the information contained in their DNA?
So, at some point, there must exist a genetic jump (necessarily mediated through genes, obviously) that separates enlightenment-capable creatures from those that are not. If you want to maintain your beliefs coherent with current basic understanding of biology, that is.
I very much believe that in Wahhabi madrassas children are indoctrinated to believe that the true ummah is in eternal struggle with the kuffar, and its Allahs will and his way to test true believers. Your line of thought is very similar AaronB, but for you Allah is inherently dialectical nature of reality, but still in the end it can be said that for you and wahhabis the ultimate is highly impersonal and inhuman.
I have for a long time suspected that as Saudi elites use common Muslims as their pawns, so too the elites of some another semitic group do to their commoners. And the elites of both groups constantly spread propaganda to their people, how they are different from others, how they are under a siege, how others hate them and want their destruction. Elites of both groups are demonic, but not their commoners, who suffer under such demons.
His Holiness always says that those who have awakened to the empty nature of reality, have genuine human warmth in their character.
Also according to him, “one must properly maintain the correct view of emptiness and the altruistic mind of enlightenment, not losing these even for the sake of one’s life. These are again and again said to be the root of the vows and pledges.”
Those pledges are Samaya and Pratimoksha vows, which are the very basis of Mahayana.
I actually do think you have a hard time understanding my philosophy 🙂 It is subtle, and does not easily fit into the binary, obvious categories used by the vulgar to explain reality.
You consistently don’t “get” it, but I applaud you for trying. “Lived with” for a while, my philosophy may become more comprehensible.
Existence is already totally meaningless, in that it doesn’t mean anything beyond itself.
As for immobility trapped in boxes, that doesn’t follow from a world with no meaning, where nothing must be done. Things get done, for the sheer fun of it. You do things because they are intrinsically satisfying, not because you have to.
If you find struggle beautiful, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t struggle. Struggle away! Have a blast! I enjoy hardship in nature and travel.
But if you are doing it out of fear or duty, or because you think it leads to a “better future”, you are not enjoying yourself, and are trapped in illusion.
This vision, does not actually change the way you live. You can continue doing exactly as you always have done, the same pleasures. Only, you do it differently- with less fear, and more zest.
A Daniel Chieh who adopted this vision, would do the same things, but more laughingly, with more zest, and less anxiety.
But this vision, must deign to choose you – you cannot choose it. You can only live with it, for a while, keep it company, and hope it deigns to bestow its grace upon you
If instead of using d/Dharma, we used quanta and/or bits the Western mind would probably accept this description as more or less adequate.
Not if by Western mind you mean modern science.
In fact, the description you have given of what Buddhism thinks about reality and causality seems to be in conflict with what Sean Carroll called the most important insight of 20th century physics: that the universe is probabilistic rather than deterministic.
I see what you are saying. The Jewish belief that they are in a struggle with antisemites, lead hatred and conflict.
I understand the logic but like most conventional wisdom, I would submit it gets it wrong.
The source of hatred and conflict, is the belief that you must win. Paradoxically, the source of conflict, is the desire to end conflict!
Why? Because if you cannot accept the existence of your foe, you will hate him and try and exterminate him. And indeed, how much destruction has been wrought, by the Wests noble wars of ideology, trying to make “goid” win?
The Wahabbis believe, they are trapped in a war, that they will eventually win, and must win. They do mlt accept their foe – they hate him totally abd want his complete eradication.
This ideology, of one side winning, is the source of hatred and conflict.
The vision I am outlining, is a version of love. I accept the antisemite, I even love him, because I know he is a precondition for my existence, as I his. On the surface, we are enemies, beneath, we are secretly bound by love. We have transcended the duality of love and hate.
This is what it means that the world is Love. This is what it means, to love your enemies.
In my vision, you have no true enemies.
His Holiness always says that those who have awakened to the empty nature of reality, have genuine human warmth in their character.
Indeed, it is well said. And when knows that ones foe is a part of one, he regards him with warmth.
Im not again having this discussion, I already explained to you couple threads ago that there is no scientifically proven theory of mind and there are lots of different theories regarding the nature of the mind. Its not my problem that you cant remember our old discussion.
You are quite boring. I dont have any problem with your atheism and I dont think that its necessarily because of some satanic plot or demonic influence, if I said so, then I were just messing with you.
Aliens really, and not just that but what you likely think of them thinking? Can you be anymore hypothetical?
They obviously needed to be adapted to the cultural traits of the societies where they appeared or else they wouldn’t have had any success.
Believing in monotheistic god is not an universal trait, but co-operation between humans is. You are again too rigid with your line of thinking. If Buddhism is helpful even for a some minority group, then the Buddhism will survive, if its not helpful for anyone then it will disappear.
Sorry to nitpick, but I and some other Buddhists dont like the term reincarnation, rebirth is better, because incarnation implies that someone incarnates again or something, like sould or person, but once again I remind that we dont believe that there is some essentially existing soul or personhood.
For us the mind is dependent on perceiving something, think about it, every moment your mind perceives something, there is no moment when you dont feel something, sometimes you are more conscious about the moment, sometimes less, but you always feel or sense something. Even eyes closed, even if you try to not think or feel anything. So we claim that there is a stream of constant perception or sensing, mindstream we call it. The physicist Freeman Dyson also claimed, that the mind is part of the reality just like matter, maybe for you its not sensible, but for us it is.
I cant understand what is problematic about the genes regarding the Buddhism? Yes there are various complicated cause and effect relations in our reality, yes everything is dependent on each other, and I didnt claim that genes are unrelated, just that its highly likely that there is one specific gene that makes us to feel desire for something.
Genetic jump? Are you capable of abstract thinking? There are no clear divide between various hominid species, all those categorizations are almost like lines drawn in water. Its not like there is clear cut divide between Homo Erectus or Homo Heudelbergensis. The evolutionary changes are very subtle and gradual, as too is the slowly growing divergence between subspecies.
The Buddhahood is dependent on numerous factors, that is very much acknowledged in Buddhism. There should be suitable civilization, that people are not chaotic and tribal, or hungry all the times or warring constantly and so on. We are not claiming that Buddhahood is somekind of inevitability, that there must always arise a Buddha, no we dont claim at all so. We very much believe that there has been numerous epochs when there havent been any Buddhas and that there are myriads of worlds that havent had and dont have any Buddhas.
You have amusingly managed to combine both your terrible theory of mind with your incoherence of speech. The fact that you will instantly flip to hypocrisy is a good example of why things like this happen:
I mostly consider it to be a waste of time to engage with you, which is why you get mockery. But for the sake of understanding of others: I struggle because it is beautiful, and because I believe that there is a certain alchemy of the soul which is refined through effort; furthermore, there is much ugliness that ought to be abolished.
It really doesn’t matter if any of it is per se real or not, and to a considerable extent I believe that it isn’t, but that is not the important part. It is in the effort that beauty lies in, and insofar as it actually might accomplish to something greater overall, it is only incidental. I do actually think there real good and evil, and it is upon us to build a better world, but even if wasn’t the case, your own philosophy would find it meaningless, since none of this is real.
As thus, then, there is nothing “wrong” with murder, sorrow, effort, joy, or anything. Nothing has meaning. Nor does your ramblings. The fact that you’re trying to repeatedly state your presumed enlightened state is merely a sign of attachment, an effort to promote something that you likely have doubts in.
So you are, basically, attempting to preach a rather ridiculous version of something I often have considered already, only with the hilarity of posing as if you knew, and pretending to be wise about it.
And that’s why you only get mockery. You don’t even deserve that, really.
If you think those primitive sticks reflect a healthier people than the ones that produced Botticelli then this conversation has ended. From my perspective there is no point talking to certifiably insane people.
The Wahabbis believe, they are trapped in a war, that they will eventually win, and must win. They do mlt accept their foe – they hate him totally abd want his complete eradication.
I think that they just strive to subjugate their enemy, or gain control over him, just like the other group. But they are much weaker so brutality is often only option left to them.
The vision I am outlining, is a version of love. I accept the antisemite, I even love him, because I know he is a precondition for my existence, as I his. On the surface, we are enemies, beneath, we are secretly bound by love. We have transcended the duality of love and hate.
You are a one strange dude, I hope that you find a Nazi girlfriend or something. Nowadays world is so strange that everything is possible…
No way thats your type, innit?
The fact that you’re trying to repeatedly state your presumed enlightened state is merely a sign of attachment, an effort to promote something that you likely have doubts in.
Its the joy of self expression. In your mind, all activity is done out of need, out of lack, but some people act out of exuberance. Being depressed, you understandably cannot imagine this.
I have always said this is just my vision. Whoever dislikes it, I wish him the best of luck in finding happiness however he can. I have complete and total respect for everyone’s version of the good life, provided it does not impede my ability to live my version of the good life.
Moreover, the world functioning on the principle of polarity, there simply must be people who take the exact opposite view of mine. I cherish and respect such people, because underneath, we define each other, and are really, one.
The surface opposition conceals inner unity. Instead of fighting people who disagree with me, as you do, my vision integrates them, because it is whole, and not one sided. Nothing is excluded. People who have an opposite vision to mine, have an honored place in my vision.
As thus, then, there is nothing “wrong” with murder, sorrow, effort, joy, or anything. Nothing has meaning. Nor does your ramblings. The fact that you’re trying to repeatedly state your presumed enlightened state is merely a sign of attachment, an effort to promote something that you likely have doubts in.
The source of your inability to understand, is that you don’t apply the principle really thoroughly. If nothing has meaning, even that fact has no meaning , so there is no reason to “force” yourself to “do nothing”, like the ascetic – instead, do what you like!
This is where most people stumble, and I do suspect it might be too subtle for you to understand, because you think in binaries. But it is all good.
There is no scientifically proven theory of anything. Proofs belong to the realm of mathematics or logic, not to natural sciences that only deal with evidences in favor of one theory until it is empirically falsified.
So the most you can hope for is that some scientific theory will provisionally be consistent with whatever religious/mythical ideas your religious group came up with to explain things that were then poorly understood.
But in fact, that everything we call mind is just the result of our brain activity is not disputed nowadays. We know this with a huge amount of certainty because if we injure our brains we damage our mental abilities. And if we die, there ceases to be any mental activity detectable anywhere from the dead person. Brains stop functioning after they stop receiving blood and any manifestation of their activity therefore stops as well.
There are probably few things as certain as this but, as I said, if you believe that biology is wrong on this matter, all you have to do is falsify it. Just believing it doesn’t change anything outside of your mind.
You are quite boring. I dont have any problem with your atheism
Yes, I would assume that you don’t care much about people being atheists. There are so many (and in so increasing numbers) of us. Your life would be quite miserable if you did.
But I do not find you boring. You are an intelligent, knowledgeable and quite sincere person. Which is why I keep torturing you with my questions. It is interesting f0r me to see what your answers are to the same sort of questions that I have often posed to Christians and others. The only Buddhists I have ever met (one of them a very good friend of mine) were of the Western/hippie type and I couldn’t take them too seriously.
So far your answers have followed a surprisingly similar pattern to the Christians’. Denial that there is any contradiction between science and your beliefs and clinging to esoteric, sometimes Jesuitic argumentations to defend this lack of contradiction.
I thank you for your patience with me anyway. You are filling a big information vacuum that I had with regards to serious practitioners of Oriental religions.
If you drive it, make sure to stop at Sand Mountain outside Fallon. The wife, kids and I had a fantastic time climbing the massive sand dune. Just be careful about not getting your vehicle stuck in the sand. The area was on the edge of a sea that has since dried up and turned to desert. It’s very beautiful.
One needs to separate health from youth. The crude product produced by a healthy, primitive and youthful culture can be judged differently that crudeness in a fully developed one. As with people – vigorous crawling on all fours as a primary means of ambulation in an infant denotes health, in a 50 year old man – some sort of disability. So the Greek object you posted denotes health; Jackson Pollock smears, decline.
See my other comment. I don’t think the people making these sticks were healthier than those who produced Botticelli, but they are certainly healthier than the 21st century descendants of those who had produced Botticelli, who nowadays make sticks their art.
Being depressed, you understandably cannot imagine this.
You couldn’t possibly know that I’m depressed or not, much less make predictions on people who are depressed on their ability to imagine anything. That would imply consistency, and in a world with no reality, neither does there need to be any consistency.
Whoever dislikes it, I wish him the best of luck in finding happiness however he can.
Happiness has no meaning, dude.
I have complete and total respect for everyone’s version of the good life, provided it does not impede my ability to live my version of the good life.
Nonsense. Your version of the good life has no meaning, and so the desire of anyone else to remove your organs validates you. The fact that you have any objection shows that you think there’s a binary between yourself and the others. You should offer up your organs and sell them for Karlin’s fund. Any pain you feel is only validating to the overall truth of your being, after all, and has no actual meaning.
Religious scholar William James once experimented with nitrous oxide and reached a state where he felt he had total comprehension of the universe. According to a story which I can’t verify, he became infuriated at losing the thread of understanding once the chemical wore off, so he decided to take notes during the experience: write down the secrets of the universe then, and reread them once he was sober. The experiment completed, he picked up the notepad in feverish excitement, only to find that he had written OVERALL THERE IS A SMELL OF FRIED ONIONS.
You’re just a scrambled idiot who has rediscovered the solution of angst of every 15 year old and given it significance through chemical ingestion and now have to self-reinforce yourself through constant posing. I can say these things because unlike you, I can live in a world with consistency and reality, with meaningful consequences, if not on the material level, then on a spiritual level. You have nothing. Now, good for you to have scrambled your brains so you’re happy but don’t pretend that any of it makes sense and realize that you’re an insult to its serious practitioners.
Now go fuck yourself. Feel honored that I actually put in the time for you.
Now go fuck yourself. Feel honored that I actually put in the time for you.
I am honored, Comrade Chieh 🙂
If you apply the principle of no meaning consistently, you must apply it even to itself, in a final, recursive act. Since my desire for happiness is not ultimately important, there is no reason not to pursue what I find makes me happy. And if I fail to achieve it, its no big deal. And if I achieve it, its also no big deal.
A world with no meaning beyond itself, nothing needs to change – even our desire to change things! Just, you don’t take it so seriously.
You don’t take your desires seriously enough to suppress them.
D.T Suzuki was once asked what Zen enlightenment felt like – he said exactly like ordinary life, just two feet of the ground. You hold everything lightly, that’s all.
Do you finally get that? Its a subtle concept and people struggle with it. The final act of any principle, is to apply it to itself, which ends up destroying it, which leaves you where you started from, but transformed. “Same same but different”.
Take logic. We can apply it to the physical world, and come up with “truths”. However, moderns do not apply logic to the examination of logic. If they did, as Kant did, you find that logic destroys itself, and cannot provide “truths”.
But nobody dares to do this today. Where do we stand when we “destroy” logic? Where we started, using logic, but not being imprisoned by it, not taking it so seriously.
But this last, recursive step in the application of a principle is too subtle for most to grasp, or requires too much courage to take.
Yet it is the step that liberates one finally.
You couldn’t possibly know that I’m depressed or not, much less make predictions on people who are depressed on their ability to imagine anything. That would imply consistency, and in a world with no reality, neither does there need to be any consistency.
A world with no ultimate reality, does not mean a world without consistent patterns. It is a world of patterns, that we may observe. Even dreams, and illusions, have patterns.
And the patterns are consistent, as long as we observe them to be. There is no rule that these patterns must reproduce themselves. They just, so far, they have. At any moment, different patterns might emerge.
We call them scientific rules, but they are really just observed patterns, about whose continuing consistency, we can say nothing.
Religious scholar William James once experimented with nitrous oxide and reached a state where he felt he had total comprehension of the universe. According to a story which I can’t verify, he became infuriated at losing the thread of understanding once the chemical wore off, so he decided to take notes during the experience: write down the secrets of the universe then, and reread them once he was sober. The experiment completed, he picked up the notepad in feverish excitement, only to find that he had written OVERALL THERE IS A SMELL OF FRIED ONIONS.
It is well known, that when one finally “understands” the universe, it cannot be put into words. Nothing has changed, but everything suddenly makes sense.
The snell of fried onions, is aa good an attempt as any 🙂
The reason it can’t be put into words, is because the universe has no meaning (it isn’t a symbol of anything), and it is only when we drop words (symbols), that we truly see it for the first time.
Wittgenstein’s philosophy was based on this insight. He tried to show, that there are no true philosophical problems. That words are bedeveling us.
He took that final, recursive step and applied philosophy, not to the world, but to itself. By showing the world was not a “problem” with a “solution”, the world “makes sense”.
In other words, the problem of life’s meaning was not solved – but transcended. It was, all along, a false question.
You are liberated from the question.
Wittgenstein was a deeply religious man, in his own way, a mystic.
But that is what we see today as well. Scientific progress and a better understanding of nature has made old religions obsolete and more and more people, especially in the advanced countries, find themselves unable to believe in them. It’s not that people like me are immoral or victims of any satanic plot, as you suggested in a previous thread. We are victims of the fact that religions have not been able to adapt to a time of widespread critical thinking like this.
Religions have probably reached a dead end, just like witchcraft and alchemy did before them.
I was used to seeing similar stuff to this in the heyday of the New Atheist movement in the late 2000s. It was pretty trendy at that time. But along came Social Justice and everyone is suddenly getting woke; once again it looks like the predictions of the demise of religion and religious thinking were premature. And this new mode of religious thinking is centred in and emanating from the more advanced and secular countries.
I was used to seeing similar stuff to this in the heyday of the New Atheist movement in the late 2000s. It was pretty trendy at that time. But along came Social Justice and everyone is suddenly getting woke; once again it looks like the predictions of the demise of religion and religious thinking were premature.
“Empty altars are populated by demons” – Ernst Junger, who converted to Catholicism in his old age
The New Atheist idiots opened the door for this woke cult.
Religions are no longer credible but the need to find some meaning to our existence is as strong as it always has been. During the 20th Century, people switched from religion to political militancy (especially communism) and later on to exotic Oriental philosphies that appeared to be more profound than traditional religions. Now it’s the turn of SJW/wokism. Something will substitute it as people also find out how shallow and unsatisfactory it is.
I didn’t pay attention to that New Atheist movement. I think that it was a predominantly British thing, if I’m not mistaken, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some people were actually trying to find meaning to their lives through militant atheism, which would be quite a funny thing.
Physically, populations of the 21st century, are of course far more healthy than in any previous artistic epochs. And spiritually/mentally, the great artists were usually something less healthy than the average people in any society that you could find them.
Great art has been generally result of the most unhealthy (whether physically or mentally) people.
I just think about the often unhappy composers we listen to. Virgin Bruckner (when he was over 70 years old) was still trying to propose marriage to horrified teenage girls. Wagner was seducing everyone’s wife. Schumann jumped into the Rhein. Musorgsky drinks alcohol to his death. Sibelius tries to drink alcohol to death every week in his youth. Stories of Beethoven’s bizarre behaviour, use up hours of reading in his biographies .
Great visual artists are not necessarily healthier people than musicians. For example, in a house room in Arles, lived together two of the world’s greatest painters – Gauguin and van Gogh. Gauguin who later was sleeping with every 14 year old girl in Tahiti, and van Gogh who cuts off his ear after an argument with Gauguin.
There is perhaps sometimes a kind of unusual “health” in the sense of “personal vitality” in people who can create great art. For example, that Victor Hugo has seduced multiple hundreds of women, can perhaps have been some sign of the energy he also had for inventing so many stories (perhaps the writing and sex addiction, were both collateral effects of a common profligacy).
But it’s not controversial to notice that a significant amount of great art requires mental illness, or at best personality disorders, and you could not imagine a normal healthy person could produce many of those achievements. For example, Wagnerian opera is probably inconceivable without narcissistic personality disorder; Tchaikovsky symphonies probably require bipolar disorder to write – and I’m not sure what level of mental diseases you would need to paint like Hieronymus Bosch.
I can always upgrade to a better sounding model later.
To improve its sound, you could just keep the same Kawai keyboard and use its MIDI-out?
I would run MIDI-out to an audio interface (to plug to your computer). Then you can use a VST (Garritan CFX Lite, Ravenscroft, etc) for the piano samples. And then connect audio interface to studio monitors.
Downside is that you would need to turn on your computer whenever you want to play, and you have a lot of wires. So it’s more inconvenient that you have to turn on computer and VST before you play (compared to just turning on digital piano), and your music room will look more nerdy.
But costs would be very low compared to upgrading to a new digital piano:
VST software: $100
Audio interface: $100 (assuming you don’t have one)
Studio monitors: $500-$2000 (assuming you don’t have good ones you use already)
Dmi wrote:Physically, populations of the 21st century, are of course far more healthy than in any previous artistic epochs. And spiritually/mentally, the great artists were usually something less healthy than the average people in any society that you could find them.
I think that’s very debatable. There’s good evidence that hunter-gatherers were healthier than modern humans(and during the immediate effects of pollution during the early 19th century, I believe that life expectancies dropped even below medieval averages).
However, once violence, child mortality and other factors are controlled for, average hunter gatherer lifespan at birth becomes 702 which is almost the same as of contemporary humans.
Hunter gatherers that exist today are also vastly healthier than civilizational humans. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are very uncommon amongst hunter gatherers – less than 10% 4 of over 60s in a population have NCDs, compared to modern urban populations where about 15% 5 of 60 to 79 year olds have heart disease alone (only one of the many possibilities of NCD). The average hunter gatherer is also far fitter than the average urban human, as the average hunter gatherer has approximately 100 minutes per day of moderate to high intensity exercise 4, compared to the modern American adult’s 17 minutes 7. Their mean body fat is also around 26% for females and 14% for males 4, compared to the average American adult’s body fat of 40% for females and 28% for males 8.
Dmi wrote:But it’s not controversial to notice that a significant amount of great art requires mental illness, or at best personality disorders, and you could not imagine a normal healthy person could produce many of those achievements
afaik only manic depressiveness has been correlated with creativity.
The break-up of Austria-Hungary was a geopolitical disaster for those small nations but it did not result in a 90’s style economic collapse/gangster takeover.
True. Though I do wonder if the economies of various parts of Austria-Hungary actually made these territories’ economies as interconnected as the economies of various Soviet SSRs were.
Possible, and there would have been messy resistance in the Center. If so, it would have been a Taiwan-style “we are the free Ukrainians” situation rather than a movement towards an independent non-Ukrainian, Galician identity.
Agreed. Also, for what it’s worth, I suspect that Yanukovych would have been willing to let Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr go if doing this was actually necessary in order for him to secure control over Kiev. Kiev in such a scenario might have been in a state of permanent or at least semi-permanent lockdown, though. And of course Yanukovych might have had to have loyal troops from eastern and/or southern Ukraine be constantly stationed to the west of Kiev in order to prevent any western Ukrainian assault on Kiev.
BTW, off-topic, but what exactly makes you think that, had it survived, the Russian Provisional Government would have actually given an autonomous Ukraine control over Novorossiya? After all, most of Novorossiya was only slightly more than half Ukrainian during this time–and even less than that if we’re talking about Ukrainophones as opposed to ethnic Ukrainians. Of course, a lot of Novorossiya’s minorities were not Russians (though Russians were the largest minority in Novorossiya, I think) but rather Jews, Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians, et cetera.
I was discussing the social health of a society. Even if some of those artists were themselves degenerates, they were still products of a healthy society and their artistic expression reflected this despite their personal problems.
AFAIK, though, the German government initially (in December 1917) offered Russia milder peace terms than that–specifically only the loss of Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and perhaps Riga. So, the Russian Provisional Government could have probably avoided losing Ukraine. However, even if this wouldn’t have actually been the case, any treaty that it would have signed with Germany would have likely been nullified by any subsequent treaty that the victorious Entente/Allies would have signed with Germany–thus allowing Russia to reclaim Ukraine and to draw the borders of an autonomous Ukraine wherever it would have saw fit to do so.
This whole art discussion is ludicrous and bizarre, its not like every artists has been driven by similar impulses which can neatly categorised into healthy or not healthy, and the motivations for creating art have wildly varied depending on epoch. Theres a great difference between medieval religious art that was mainly produced by craftsmen who were members of guilds and 19th century virtuosos. Heck even Bach would have been impossibility before the reformation, for medieval Christians were categorically against instrumental church music.
Yes its true that modern art often sucks, but maybe its because there is lack of genuine passion and inspiration in modern society, compared to 19th century, everything seems more mundane and death is not very present, even Soviet society of Stalin and Lenin had quite many interesting artists and composers, but Im not sure of root reasons for the present situation, just that this health discussion is more or less pointless.
True. Though I do wonder if the economies of various parts of Austria-Hungary actually made these territories’ economies as interconnected as the economies of various Soviet SSRs were.
They were, Austria and Czechia had most of the industry, especially Czechia, and they were much more urbanised than Kingdom of Hungary, which was the breadbasket of the empire, and had almost no industry outside of the Budapest. Vienna the capital of the empire of 50 million, had population of 2 million, but after the war it became a capital of country of just 6 million people.
See how the true Bharati dont look at all like those Punjabi quislings who collaborated with the cursed Britishers in subjugation of proud and dark Indian folk.
To others
Really most people of India are much darker than most Indians of the west, or those in movies, media or among elites. Except the Punjabis, Himachalis and Kashmiris. They are quite fair.
The man from Rakhigarhi turns out to have been genetically proximate to members of the Irula community, an Adivasi group living in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, whose traditional occupation is catching rats and snakes. This connection strengthens the common hypothesis that Indus Valley populations spoke a Dravidian language
The most persistent argument against the steppe migration thesis is that it is a product of racist, imperialist thought. In Sanyal’s words, “Once you remove the racist assumption of a superior white conqueror from the North, the available data is all quite consistent.”
TL;DR the Northern India populations are descendants of invaders who destroyed a beautiful civilization built by Proud Black People. These evil pale skinned steppe invaders subjugated the gentle dark skinned folks or forced them to flee South. Sime of the Proud Black People ended-up surviving by catching rats and snakes
The pale faced colonialists then imposed their evil genocidal religious caste system upon the Native Bharats. The offspring of the white northerner colonizers are still walking around with swords, aggressively attacking local democratically elected governments and overall behaving like the barbarians they are!
Sher Singh and the like must check their privilege.
Based Modiji dabbing on Sikh Saboteurs. Remember the Bharat Bandh? Turns out it was just Punjab and Haryana chimping out. Most people are not aware that the Jatt Sikhs own a huge portion of Punjab’s land with dalits owning less than 1% (despite being 1/3rd the population). This is the revolt of the privileged and I’m glad Modiji is bulldozing the jattoids.
The Akal Takht, the highest temporal body of Sikhs, and the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) managing key Sikh shrines, today disapproved of the Delhi High Court judgement which legalised gay sex among consenting adults.
lol, Abhinav Prakash has already exposed this lie. Most of the landgrabs happened in the wake of the green revolution. The jattoids are not victims. They are the privileged class fighting to keep their ill-gotten gains that they stole from poorer and less empowered communities.
This is a revolt of the privileged farmers. Most people aren’t even aware that of the agricultural workers in India, a majority are landless labourers. Even among the farmers, the typical farmsize has shrunk for decades. Punjab has the highest agricultural income in all of India (Haryana is the 2nd) and gets massive subsidies for wheat and rice despite being quite arid. It is idiotic yet successive governments have done this precisely for fear of mobilisation by the rich and powerful segments in these societies. It has to end and Modiji is the man to do it.
Society doesn’t need less education, it just needs less propaganda, which is what most “education” is actually dressed up to be.
I do think that too much education is destructive to society. Especially too much university education. You end up with too many people whose expectations have been raised too high. When they don’t get the high-paying high-status jobs that they expected they become disaffected and cause huge social problems.
We have a particular problem with an over-production of lawyers.
Society doesn’t need less education, it just needs less propaganda, which is what most “education” is actually dressed up to be.
I think that’s always been the case. A major function of education has always been to indoctrinate children into the ruling ideology. Conservatives are upset today because it’s no longer their ideology that is being indoctrinated into children. They liked the good old days when education was propaganda, but it was their propaganda.
I’m not sure we should say Quattrocento and Cinquecento was a socially healthy Italy – was the universe described by Machiavelli on the political level. And compared to later centuries, would be considered a very brutal and violent life not just between, but also inside city states. Yet inside these Italian cities, full of constant political problems – came history’s most developed and beautiful flowering in visual culture.
The greatest art and literature of any people in world history, was created in Classical Athens. Yet in Classical Athens, half of the population were slaves, and it was a time of every kind of disaster, regular fratricidal wars among neighbours, plagues, etc. During the rule of Thirty Tyrants in Athens, executed proportionally more citizens in their political repressions, than Stalin in 1930s Soviet Union.
products of a healthy society
What about the theme of great 19th century writers like Flaubert, Zola or Dickens, Baudelaire?
Tragic moments in Flaubert’s writing, when he writing about the life of prostitutes, and lack of empathy of bourgeoisie for others. Zola about drunks and poverty and its hereditary cycle. In Baudelaire about the faces of street orphans, .etc.
In socially healthy Paris or London, without all this sadness and poverty – what would Baudelaire write about?
Yes I think this is a good point you wrote here. Probably our insulation from death is one of the things which encourages less tragic or serious dimension in much of current art and culture. (Tragedy, which was considered the highest genre of art in former ages.) Although it’s just another factor to add to a long list.
Im not sure of root reasons for the present situation, just that this health
In modern history, new genre of art are usually introduced by a technological change, and the genre has an internal history, and does become exhausted according to its own cycle.
For example, the novel rises across the 19th century, and is exhausted in the early 20th century. Cinema has similar short artistic golden age, and was becoming exhausted by the 1970s-80s.
Jazz music was really short in its golden age, starting in the 1920s – by the 1980s it was becoming something you put inside a museum.
Much of the excitement people had about painting, was killed by a technological change – photography, and the history of painting after photography is about trying every idea to be different from the mere mimesis which was now occupied by photography.
This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.
Speaking of monoliths:
https://www.vox.com/culture/22062796/monoliths-utah-california-romania
https://twitter.com/singhwhotweets/status/1334732103087493120?s=20
The future of humanity. 🙂
https://youtu.be/ID6r_OBJpO8
I still prefer the Schizmatrix timeline. Or the Diaspora timeline.
I keep reading that the future of the US (or of the Western Civilization, as some have put it) depends on the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs but I can’t bring myself to feel any enthusiasm for that particular election.
If the heroes defending the Thermopylae Pass are going to be Romney, Graham, Inhofe, Murkowski, etc we are doomed.
Those two Georgia senators themselves have just voted for an expansion of legal immigration and are not known to have done anything to support Trump’s legal efforts to investigate fraud. I even doubt that they will vote for a repeal of Section 230 in order to have the defense budget passed, as Trump has sensibly demanded.
Why should any real Trumpist (as opposed to fans of Trump-the-person) vote for them?
I don’t know if vote fraud (which most certainly existed) was more widespread than usual or mattered much for the final results but a number of very specific accusations have been provided by multiple witnesses of Rudy Giuliani’s team and it doesn’t look like anybody has much interest in investigating them. How difficult would it be to find out if that truck driver really transported thousands of ballots from NY to PA or those Georgia elections workers recorded by CCTV really took bags of ballots from under a table and started counting them when all observers had been sent home?
Quite frankly, I think that this Republican Party deserves to lose and if I were a Georgia voter, I would probably opt for an accelerationist abstention.
Never heard of it but I took a stab at wiki plot review (spoilers ahead)
Sold! Lunar ideal prostitutes are awesome.
Simp. Female love interest has bigger balls than main hero.
Now that’s simping on female love interest’s part. There is never a need to kill yourself – nature will always to do it for you. If you are bored, go rob a bank and police will either accomplish your goal or you get to have a lot of fun. But yeah, never kill yourself, rob banks instead. More fun and same goal will be accomplished.
Also, duels are old fashioned. Though COVID separation distance proper.
Mega simp. The entire point of my existence is that my great grand spawn become mermaids/men on Europa. To not go through with that vision when it is at hand is mega pussy move. Useless losers.
But I’m glad others are working on it, even if they chicken out at the end 🙂
It’s hard to remove an incumbent from office. So if the two Democrats are elected, they likely will be in office for decades to come.
If the GOP loses the seats, they will consider the reason not as (dejected base voters) but as (alienated suburban moderates). So they will pander even harder to blacks.
Donors could also conclude that the GOP can no longer be relevant in most states, further shifting them towards neoliberal Dems.
The momentum is also important for the off-year and midterm elections.
Fraud is only relevant, if it is something that liberals will accept as evidence. The problem is that liberals will use the Sagan Standard. And just as Sagan’s intrinsic bias against Christianity, liberals have an intrinisic bias against our claims. So you can never have any proof to satisfy them.
A positive knock-on effect of the Trump defeat, is that a Le Pen victory in 2022 is more probable. Moderate French voters would presume that any of her excesses would be contained by a liberal government in Washington.
The question is whether she can maneuver to the left on Macron wrt economics.
So, where do you think Australia’s economy will be in 10 years?
You know it brother.
While I’m quite sympathetic towards Trump (he yelled at Federal Reserve to lower rates, how many Presidents even comprehend it’s important?), currently I’m hoping for Democratic party wins. We are going to need a whole lot more stimulus going forward and Republicans are not helpful.
To rescue global economy, money printer must go brr.. and my friend corona chan is going to make it happen, one way or another.
You should read the book. It’s worth it. It has been written in the 80ies and it’s still relevant, which makes it a master piece of transhumanist Sci Fi.
Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel)
Probably even more relevant, although less entertaining.
Otoh, it could attract American emigres if there is some kind of dislocating event in Silicon Valley (big earthquake, tax hikes, race riots)
Desalination tech is improving.
Maybe they change their nuclear policy.
They have the worst performing left party in any Anglo country. Will they find their own Ardern, or more decade of lethargy.
The Murdochs might leave the US and go back home.
Ever heard about Torgsin?
How they pumped out gold, hard currency and valuables from starving Soviet citizens to fund the industrialization ASAP before the war?
Look it out, quite instructive.
I wonder what the odds are that the US federal minimum wage will go to $15.
Interesting take. I am firmly in the “bacteria with spaceships” camp. To explain my view more clearly, in StarCraft, between Protoss, Terrans, and Zerg, I firmly root for the Zerg. As such, resource constant is irrelevant – universe contains infinite energy and resources. There is no such thing as resource constraint in the real world. Resources are infinite. All that matters is deployment and purpose.
While virtual reality is awesome fun (nothing beats watching the stars at Darnielle’s Progress landing pad on Maia system in the Pleiades in VR), we do need to advance real world technology to make this vision happen in real time eventually.
Does it matter what Establishment Republicans would conclude from a substantial abstention rate of Republicans in the GA runoffs?
They would be out of power at a national level, with almost half the country believing (right or wrong) that the presidential elections have been stolen and losing all faith in the system. A Democratic trifecta would do absolutely nothing to win these people back, they would instead alienate them even more, and conditions could be rife for a reshuffle of the GOP, perhaps along the lines of the original Trump 2016 ideas.
But I could be totally wrong. I am far from being an expert in political matters. Still, a slim Senate majority that includes the characters I have mentioned above is such a sad situation that I would not bother much keeping it.
Yeah, but we will probably converge technologically speaking before the nuclear war. As far as WW2 goes, vatniks are correct about the Lend Lease, it really didn’t amount to much for USSR.
But what mattered? Soviet factories were designed by American engineers, like that Stalingrad tank factory, the only reason why T34 tanks could leave that factory into war zone was because Americans from Gary Indiana (International Harvester Corp) designed and built it.
But American Corporations in Great Depression era didn’t do it for free hence Soviet policy.
What I’m trying to say is that nobody was evil there – all were trying to make a living. American corporations needed golden червонец (10 ruble gold money) because Great Depression ruined their profits. And Soviets needed most modern Fordism and Taylorism advanced mass manufacturing technology and management. Both got what they wanted. Germans lost in the end.
It might but it won’t be enough. Employers will simply automate before they pay that wage.
Which is why I support basic income and oppose minimum wages and “tax the rich” schemes. Leftists are incorrect when they think that wage floor will solve our macroeconomic problem.
I am not going to try to take you out from your world where human wants are limited but the ability of governments to accumulate debt and print money without negative consequences is unlimited (an idea that even Paul Krugman would laugh at). I have more urgent things to do.
However, I would like to ask you a question, if you don’t mind.
As you know, in the past centuries the economy has shown a continuous bubble and bust pattern. There are records of these cycles starting in the Netherlands, Sweden or England as far back as the 17th-18th centuries. Since the ’20s of this century multiple strategies have been tried to combat the recession part of the cycle: public spending in the 30s, full fledged Keynesian economics in the post war-70s period, supply side economics in the 80s, liberalization in the 90s-2000s, monetary expansion since the latest great recession,… but nothing has been able to eliminate the business cycle. There is zero reason to believe that there won’t be another endogenous global recession (not exogenous, as the one caused by Covid-19) in the near or medium future.
Does a person like you think that this cyclic pattern is inevitable? If so, what exact law of nature do you think that has caused it to persists over centuries?
Le Pen has gradually deradicalised the party compared to her father. Macron is now doing things she haven’t even proposed (shutting down mosques). Her economics are even more neoliberal than his, which is idiotic given that her voter base is mostly from the rust belt. Macron has higher approval ratings at this stage of his presidency than comparable presidents, and the covid bump is long gone, so it has staying power.
In many ways, I am surprised that people still talk about her as a radical. She’s basically an edgy neoliberal in most matters and of course an ardent Zionist. The only real distinction between the two is that she’s eurosceptic, but that has less salience in continental Europe than in the UK because France has always been more powerful within the EU than the Brits, who mostly spent their time looking in after a Paris-Berlin compromise was a done deal.
And people with your naïve analysis forget that the 2nd round matters, not the first.
What is it with rightoids and closet homosexuality?
https://i.redd.it/9wvids6io6361.jpg
Pan Jianwei has led a group of Chinese researchers into achieveing photon-based quantum supremacy. The details are here.
Google’s Sycamore last year claimed supremacy too – although IBM had some choice words for that.
What differentiaties the two is that they are using different methods. Photon-based supremacy was thought to be impossible by some (looking at you, Gil Kalai), or at least highly impractical. One way to think about these things is that you’re essentially seeing two expedititons land at the same continent but at opposite ends. It remains to be seen which form of quantum computing becomes the dominant one.
The term ‘quantum supremacy’ was invented in 2012 by John Preskill and it can fool people into beliving that they can supersede classical computers in everything. In reality, they are still only demonstrating supremacy over classicals in a strict defined set of tasks. We’re still a long ways off from a general computing paradigm replacement.
Nevertheless, to get to that place you have to start beating classical computers in more limited tasks and that is now happening with increasing frequency. These are very exciting times and I’m glad we’re seeing innovation from China.
Together with the DeepMind announcement that they have made protein folding significantly easier, which was praised by typically skeptical voices (certainly SSC consensus was that this was a Big Deal), it makes it harder for those who peddle ideas of ‘industrial malthusianism’ and other nonsense. What is different is that the fairy tale that the whole ’emerging world’ would catch up is being exposed as the fraud as it always was, including for places like Russia. So those who live in these stagnating areas want to paint the world black because their own country is doing poorly, and will likely continue to. In reality, innovation is ongoing and so is convergence. Just not there.
Actually, there is a Canadian company called Xanadu, which claims to developed a quantum computer with the same concept as the Chinese prototype, that has more flexible real-world applications, due to being easier to program to perform different computations. And Ionq claim to develop a quantum computer that brings forth better real-world performances using the trapped ion method, although its amount of qubits is that as much.
There’s a good discussion on the state of quantum computing here:
Extremely powerful and extremely correct. Car cucks need to be bullied out of the idea that they should have an equal footing with cyclists or pedestrians. EVs are merely a stop-gap solution. In the long term, cars should only be used in rural areas and between cities, not within them.
It’s long past time to correct the single biggest urban policy disaster of the 20th century: the cancerous car-centric culture that has destroyed the beauty of our great cities.
Motorcycle gangs need to make a comeback.
Is there anybody in the European (or British) far right who isn’t an ardent Zionist?
The place where I live have tried a mild version of this, excluding cars from the city center. The net result seems to be that people drive off to the shopping barns on the city edge instead.
Will there be swarthy gangs carrying the organic quinoa and other everyday supplies to the 15-min shop as the Green Party rep cracks the whip?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Ilia_Efimovich_Repin_%281844-1930%29_-_Volga_Boatmen_%281870-1873%29.jpg/1200px-Ilia_Efimovich_Repin_%281844-1930%29_-_Volga_Boatmen_%281870-1873%29.jpg
I don’t see why commodities should collapse as a result of a deterioration in trade with China (if that is what you are suggesting). China’s demand won’t have lessened any, and another countries cannot so straightforwardly ramp up production of certain commodities, so if China buys more from other countries, other countries, in turn, will buy more from Australia, so it more or less evens out.
Any ‘property bubble’ (Australia’s been in one extended ‘bubble’ for 20 years now) is less of a concern to me than the phenomenally high levels of household debt. I’m not exactly sure what that portends, but it’s hard to see it as anything positive.
Australia’s environment is no more vulnerable today than in the past. It’s just that this stuff gets more play nowadays, with so many environmentalist catastrophists predicting the end times are upon us.
The issue with desalination has never been the technology. It’s always been social values and political will – ie obstructionist greenie assholes and their media sympathizers.
Democrat senators will be worse, but not sufficiently worse to justify voting for cuckservatives. It hardly matters what the cuckservative establishment “concludes” was the reason for their defeat, since they’re committed to those conclusions regardless of any evidence to the contrary (of which there is plenty).
Also, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the MAGA faction of the GOP can makes its own voice heard these days in a way that wasn’t true four years ago. So there will be plenty of opportunity to counter the cuckservative narrative about why Republicans lost the senate (if they do) with arguments like: cuck senators refused to back Trump, so voters refused to back cucks.
And really, the idea that more ‘Macaca bills’ (a la Mike Lee) are going to do anything good for whites (or even Americans more broadly) is too stupid for words.
Nah, it is a real problem with cost. Unless you mean “obstructionists” by anti-nuclear activists, sure, but its a very real cost to endlessly distill water.
I want all Jews to move to Israel as fast as possible, does this make me an ardent zionist ?
1000 miles per charge
Nick Griffin (now Unz review writer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_general_strike_of_2020
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/12/general-strike-india-modi-bjp-cpm-bihar
https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/truckers-body-calls-for-strike-in-north-india-from-december-8-in-solidarity-with-farmers-agitation
I was born in the early Soviet 70ies in Moscow. I’ve grown up at a time when it was quite normal for Soviet kids to be reading Lem, Kir Bulychev, Yefremov, the Strugatsky brothers etc. My parents had an inscription for the Soviet Sci Fi review Iskatel’ and the scientific popularization review Znanye Sila. They were typical Soviet educated scientific/technical intelligentsia with average Soviet salaries, who cared about and enjoyed the typical things these NII types cared about.
As a family we believed in progress in its form described by Vernadsky. Lithosphere >> Biosphere >> Noosphere. The humans evolving further and colonizing the solar system and then swarming the galaxy in the twenty first century was normal for us. By the end of the eighties it seemed absolutely inevitable.
But then Perestroika came and we learned a lot about human nature that we didn’t know before. Attitudes that we thought were buried in the Dostoevsky’s times (I exaggerate here, but I believe you get my point) came back with a vengeance. Some humans revealed themselves as greedy, lying and aggressive “naked apes “. They were only looking for self gratification and personal profit. They did not care for the stars, they were really not that interested in knowing anything that did not result in more moneys, more consumption and pleasure (sex mainly). Humans appeared as perverted animals.
That is where the philosophical and religious aspects of the life became self-evident and absolutely outstanding: how do you live your life without becoming the self-indulgent “naked ape”? How do you organize yourself and your loved ones to stay human in the better sense of the term? How do you survive the aggressive and aggravated ego trip our civilization embarked upon and that we keep pretending is progress?
I no longer believe that we will be able to reach for the stars as a species. Perhaps some of us will, but the immense majority of us will live and die on this planet. And this is simply due to the fact that as a species we are not evolved enough – either intellectually or morally – to become a spatial civilization.
We still need resources though, so we will probably send automated AI probes to gather the resources that we can grab from the solar system. We will continue surviving with a lower consumption level. We will decrease in numbers. Perhaps we will even go extinct.
The singularity was the last chance we had to become something more than a “naked ape “, we are missing that chance. As a species we didn’t have in us what is needed to get to the next stage of development.
People frequently say that China is severely lacking in soft power, but I am not sure thats true.
For instance, otherwise sensible people on Unz go full retard when it comes to China, like otherwise excellent and sensible commenter dfordoom, who is one of the best commenters on Unz. Thats some pretty incredible soft power.
And in general China is hugely popular with the “asshole brigade” on Unz, and with people on Unz in general.
People who for instance severely criticize US suppression of free speech will completely ignore Chinas Social Credit system. Thats some fantastic soft power right there.
I would say right now China is beginning to fill the role of Communist Russia in its early years. People were looking for alternatives to Western capitalism, and anything that offered itself, however implausibly, as an alternative, was embraced by people absolutely desperate to find a force for “good” in the world.
Like in early Soviet days, all evidence to the contrary was ignored and people clung to their illusions.
The truth is mankind cannot handle too much reality and they need illusions. Hating the West, they cannot handle the fact that China is as bad or worse, and in the same metrics even. That would simply be too bleak.
And of course, the unscrupulous can easily exploit your dreams and illusions, your fantasies and hopes.
But to return to my point – it is wrong to bemoan China’s supposed lack of soft power. China has tremendous soft power, the kind that feeds on illusions (which may be the best kind as it is untethered from reality), but at the moment, China’s soft power seems mostly confined either to losers or the “asshole brigade” who cheer its assertive disregard for norms.
China’s soft power seems to have a human quality problem at the moment. Will that change?
The US is said to have tremendous soft power, but has it ever commanded the blind admiration- the willingness to simply ignore massive faults – that Soviet Russia had? It seems to me that the US was always criticized even when it was admired.
Soviet Russia was based on an “ideal” – and thus commanded blind admiration of the kind the US, based more on realistic acceptance of human failings like greed, could never do, however successful and dynamic it was.
China seems not to be based on an ideal – unless it is technocrats efficiency, which I think is pretty thin stuff for most people to find the Meaning Of Life in. Still, a small number of people will find this sufficient.
And in its role as opposition to the US, still more people will find in China a Life Raft to cling to.
But I don’t think it will command the level of enthusiasm- among high quality prople – that Soviet Russia did.
I think the two ways to command enthusiasm from high quality people is 1) Have a lofty “ideal” 2) Be very dynamic and creative. Soviet Russia had #1 and America had #2.
China has technological efficiency and social control.
People who think China can simply create good art to gain soft power – engineer its way into soft power- do not understand cause and effect. Good art is an effect of dynamic systems with a lot of creative freedom. The same qualities that lead to dynamic success in technology and business spill over into art and soft power.
You cannot engineer your way into soft power. It is a spill over from a general system. Your soft power os inherently limited by uour system – there are barriers you cannot engineer your way out of.
“Idealism” has inherent soft power. We all want to think humans are perfectible. Soviet Rusdia had inherent appeal. Dynamic creativity has inherent appeal.
Social control and technocrats efficiency – do they have inherent appeal? It must be admitted, to some people, yes. But will it ever generate enthusiasm among large numbers of high quality people, like Soviet Russia did, like America did, like England did?
Japan, for instance is admired for its style, its dynamic creativity, and its cult of craftsmanship and perfection. These are all inherently appealing qualities.
Does China have inherently appealing qualities? It might develop them, if it relaxed conscious control and allowed more freedom. In fact, I am confident it would develop them. But the whole question of “engineering” soft powerfor China is to mistake the issue. To develop soft power China must precisely relax the engineering approach.
Its clear that you and AaronB dont give any consideration for family life with multiple kids.
You are partially correct, but you miss something important: without a very rapid moral improvement our civilization will not be able to use these technologies to our betterment. Our abilities to control and steer these developments are limited because we are too self-centered and too hedonistic.
That is why people far more intelligent than both you and I are, have decided to take control of the fourth technological revolution and prevent the Singularity or at least delay it. I think that they will impose ecological malthusian social organization upon us as a species to slow and control the technological transformation.
Perhaps it is the only way.
I am not sure how you can say that, when I am trying to rehabilitate child raising and family life as joyful?
I think the main reason family life has declined is because the stress was on it being a duty. But duties are boring. Didn’t Jesus come to preach freedom from the Law?
Single life is fun till about 25. One of life’s top ten pleasures hiking through nature with fresh eyed, adventurous kids.
We have been pushing the Survive Paradigm exclusively. In this paradigm, it is more important for a woman to have a career – to work for her survival – than to enjoy her life, which would mean having kids.
I think modern women – especially elite women – are almost guilty at choosing children over career, because that means choosing the thrive paradigm over the survive paradigm. That means choosing pleasure – that dreaded thing – over duty. (Although things are changing, and elite women are having more kids. The Thtive Paradigm in general, I notice with pleasure, is gaining an ever growing foothold in elite culture, and it is the sad lower classes who have not yet gotten the message)
Who are we to enjoy life? We must toil, for the day is short, and the threats many and unrelenting. At all costs, survive! But such a life is proving not worth the candle.
Also – isn’t a more livable city like Copenhagen without cars, life promoting and family friendly? Isn’t that precisely the point? It promotes healthy exercise, its beauty nourishes the soul, and the availability of local shops promotes social mingling and builds community.
You are a strange fish, Altan, a strange fish indeed. You are trapped, my poor fellow, in the Survive Paradigm.
https://twitter.com/amaanbali/status/1335192933247504385?s=20
Done.
You might want to at least get my terminology correct (Malthusian Industrialism). Which I have always positioned as a possible scenario, not as a prophecy.
Rest of your text is attacking straw men as usual for you.
Neither of these progressive urbanites do.
Thats madness in a developing country! Though I suspect that 25 crore is Indian style tall tale, 10 crore would already be totally crazy.
Also their demands are more or less unrealistic, if such labour agitations will become chronical, then the India will not rise anymore economically.
Now is the Tiananmen moment of Modi!
One should strike iron when its hot!
Re: Globohomo attack on Poland
Poland is the Afghanistan of Europe, i.e., unconquerable, except briefly
by historic standards. Germans, the fun people that they are, exerted all
their power over the last 1200 years trying to destroy Poland, all to no
avail. Note that the Germans easily rolled over the Slavic tribes that
inhabited the area between the Elbe and the Oder rivers, but not
Poland. Swedes, who gleefully collaborated with Hitler, invaded Poland
in the 1650s, killing directly or indirectly 4 million people, that is one-third the
population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Russian
tsars, 90% Germanics, also tried to conquer Poland, and partly
succeeded but only for a hundred years. And where are Germany
and Austria today? Largely reduced to non-entities by world
standards while Poland remains unbowed, its language and culture
intact, and rapidly becoming the finance, real estate, and entertainment
center of Central Europe (e.g., in the last few years Poland has become
the largest exporter of video games in Europe). Jews, another fun
people, also did their bit trying to destroy Poland in the postwar
years, using the subterfuge of Marxism, i.e., Christianity Lite. No one
is as smart as the Jews, so the Jews came up with the idea that
torturing their Christian opponents in postwar Poland would do
wonders for the Marxist cause. That was indeed very smart.
Currently, the globohomo forces are trying to conquer
Poland, as they had recently conquered Germany. But
gay marriage succeeded in the West not because people wanted it
but because the marriage certificate, with the high rates of divorce made
easy in the 1960s through the subterfuge of irreconcilable
differences, is not worth the paper it’s printed on. In other words,
the marriage vow no longer means anything in the West, so you
might as well give it to the people of LGBT persuasion. In fact, Americans
are actually losing interest in marriage, fewer than 50% of adults
are married, so the gay interest in marriage looks positively weird.
You wanna get on a woman’s nerves in the U.S.? Tell her that seeing
a man getting married is like watching a lamb being led to slaughter.
I tried it. They are not amused!
Ugh too bipolar, first you were a starry eyed optimist, then you became a simian pessimist. Speculating about future and fabricating hypothetical models is its own fetter. Its a cliche to state that no one knows what future holds, but its a good cliche, still there is one thing that I surely know about the future, and its that there will always
be surprises.
https://rimebuddhism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/about-kc-outer-742×742.jpg
https://c.radikal.ru/c16/2012/61/faf680bfa466.png
Do you?
Kinda hard to teach anyone anything, let alone a nation, when you don’t have the capabilities yourself.
Actually, if anyone can remember the late 90s, the US was almost universally admired. Even Russians wanted to become Americans.
So defensive 🙂
I am a great friend of the true China.
I’m not trying to teach China anything. In fact, I am saying treating soft power as an engineering problem for China, as I often see, is the wrong approach.
China has very appealing qualities, just, they aren’t being allowed to blossom forth under the heavy hand of the current regime.
What is required is less heavy handed engineering, and more freedom.
See, no reason to be offended.
I suppose it is debatable if a more walkable city is necessary worse for family life. After all, people did have large families before there were cars and the Twitter commentator @WrathOfGnon, who most likely had both right-wing and pro-family views, is very supportive of more walkable cities.
I can see the challenges with a larger family with public transportation, but I think they do not have to be insurmountable challenges, provided that there was effort placed into it. Unfortunately, I don’t think that it’ll happen.
(cont.)
So what is the secret of Poland’s strength?
At least two factors. One is the fact that the Polish elites are
descended from the steppe warriors, Sarmatians if you like.
Hence the warrior spirit is alive and well in Poland. The same
applies to Hungary (“Polak, Węgier, dwa bratanki”). Much
can be cited as evidence, e.g., obsession with horses and horsemanship.
I know someone who trains people in horsemanship, combined
with archery in his case. Great battles, like the Battle of Grunwald (1410)
in which Poland defeated the Teutonic Knights, are regularly re-enacted
employing thousands of horses. High status of women since women
would participate in battles alongside men is another piece of evidence.
Heraldry is another.
Second factor is Catholicism. Protestantism is weak because there
is a thin line between Protestantism and agnosticism. Standard joke
is that Episcopalian/Anglican churches should have a question mark
instead of a cross on their steeples – nobody is certain of anything.
Eastern Orthodoxy is also weak (I know I’m going to offend a lot of
people here). Orthodoxy is too mystical, services last too long, you
have to stand or even prostrate yourself, etc It’s impractical for
the modern era. More importantly, it lacks a theoretical foundation
that in Catholicism is provided by Thomism, i.e., philosophy of
Thomas Aquinas who basically constructed a synthesis of Aristotelianism
and Christianity. Maritain, Gilson, and others developed Neo-Thomism
which updated Thomism for modern needs. Catholic ethics is basically
virtue ethics – moderation in all things. This has a powerful implication –
avoid all sorts of addiction, esp. to sex and to drugs. Protestantism
completely lacks the idea of moderation, one reason why Americans
are so addicted to drugs. Poland has low divorce rates (and virtually
no abortions. They went too far here causing current demonstrations).
This means that the idea of marriage still means something there. Poland
may adopt a moderate solution – a facsimile of marriage of some sort –
but I doubt that full-fledged gay marriage will be adopted anytime soon.
Americans are weaklings – the globalists tell them to jump, and
Americans ask, “How high?”. The current voter fraud scandal shows
that Americans, like the Brits, will meekly accept whatever the globalists
cook up for them.
Actually, I am beginning to think that the attraction of the Chinese system – illusory as it is – may serve a very useful role in inspiring reform in the West. Its well known that much of the social welfare reforms the West adopted in the early 20th century were out of fear of communisf Russia.
Illusions can serve useful purposes, just as the attraction of the Soviet system did.
But for that to work, China has to become attractive to high quality people, like Russia was, not just the Unzo-trash. Only then will it be seen as enough of an ideological threat to inspire reform.
See Altan, one must always look for the dialectic aspect of any situation, for that side of a thing that seems to oppose its surface appearance.
https://twitter.com/chenweihua/status/1334561058799964164?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1334561058799964164%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediaite.com%2Fnews%2Fchina-daily-bureau-chief-calls-marsha-blackburn-a-lifetime-btch-for-insulting-chinese-people%2F
https://twitter.com/chenweihua/status/1334567538534084608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1334567538534084608%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediaite.com%2Fnews%2Fchina-daily-bureau-chief-calls-marsha-blackburn-a-lifetime-btch-for-insulting-chinese-people%2F
https://japan-forward.com/app/uploads/2020/05/Wolf-Warrior-2-photo-Amazon-photo.jpg
As I told you, whenever the topic changes away from China, you turn into an eminently reasonable person.
I am simply shocked that it comes at a cost. I had no idea. I had been assuming it was a complete freebie. I’ll have to reevaluate everything I ever thought about it now.
It’s not enough to just exclude cars. You need to understand that 20th century cities were built around car ownership. That was a normative choice. This is even more true in the US but even “old European” cities had plenty of destruction. Stockholm unilaterally tore down entire districts of beautiful buildings to make way for shabbily constructed neighbourhoods with a car-centric focus.
That’s why the Paris mayor spoke of the “15 minute city”. It’s bringing about a whole ecosystem of changes that makes it unnecessary to go far beyond where you live. Just doing one change – banning cars from the city center – but not doing the much harder peripheral work of re-organising how the entire city is structured – is doomed to fail. And that is exactly what happened judging by your own story.
Urban planning takes time. Decades for deep and thorough changes. We cannot fool ourselves this would be an overnight transformation. Just undoing the catastrophic damages to our cities will be yeoman’s work, let alone improve upon that. There can be no illusions about the magnitude of the task ahead.
That does it: Marsha Blackburn for Senate Foreign Relations Committee!
Btw, “lifetime bitch,” that’s a good insult. This Chen Weihua would be a good fit for an AK open thread, invite him over.
Yowza, yet another falling out? Could it possibly be that I am the last of your (semi) regular readers that doesn’t hate your guts? (Perhaps you think I do, the way you rudely mischaracterized my casual hope that Biden push Russia back behind the Urals as a desire to annihilate Russia (sheesh!), but I most certainly don’t.)
Paul Krugman thought the internet was a fad, so much for his creative thinking. As for negative consequences, what would those be? High inflation? High inflation grows nominal GDP like crazy which reduces debt to GDP ratio. This is what US did in the 50’s to get rid of WW2 debt – set those war bond rates at 3.75% and let inflation loose at 10%. Bondholders kinda got screwed, costs of living doubled between mid 40′ s and 50’s but the economy boomed. High inflation will be a solution to the problem of debt rather than a negative consequence.
Hyperinflation? Will the likes of Amazon and Walmart hike prices by 100% daily? More importantly, will they hike wages by as much to keep up? Would they refuse to accept USD and only take Bitcoin or something? Why? They are owned by $billionaires in USD, if Bezos sales plummet if he refuses dollars his wealth will be ruined. I don’t see it happening – the rich are not stupid.
Well yeah, that’s bank credit for you. Banks create money when they lend against assets. This causes money to flow to people with assets (aka rich) which is very convenient and nice if you are rich. Money flowing from the banks to the rich cause the asset values to rise, which enables the rich to gain even more money/credit against the rising asset value which causes asset values to rise in a spiral we call an asset bubble. Because the rich hoard all the money income growth in the economy stalls and incomes from assets are no longer sufficient to pay the banks. This we call a bust, when the bubble pops.
Business cycle is inevitable as long as money supply is controlled by the bunch of retarded hamsters we call “banks”, and that’s an insult to a retarded hamster, to be compared to a banker. Banks are stupid, evil, and obsolete, we don’t need them anymore.
In the future, money won’t be this debt/credit asset based ledger entry anymore. Money will be a regulated utility just like electricity. Federal Reserve will create digital accounts for all citizens and will fund them appropriately (to achieve Fed inflation target). With money pumped to the bottom of the economy rather than given to only those with assets, it will ensure incomes are there to make whatever payment is required (regulated with interest rates). Banks as we know it will be nationalized and converted into Reserve branches. Fractional reserve lending will be abolished and replaced with full reserve banking (banks will actually have to lend deposits rather than create money). Instead of raising debt, corporations will rely more on equity for funding.
Current political economy is structured around debt/asset idea. This makes business cycle inevitable. In the future, political economy will be structured around income/equity idea. This just might abolish the business cycle, who knows.
Most of the likes for that tweet are by angry Democrats.
It is very important that every single scenario to prevent a Joe Biden Presidency or make it’s life as hard as possible happens.
My instinct was correct that Joe Biden’s administration of Liberals and Jews will execute plans to destroy and eliminate Republika Srpska and the Serb nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina whenever it gets the chance or feels like it. Note: Daniel Serwer = triple brackets …
https://www.peacefare.net/2020/11/25/restoring-individual-rights-and-hope-in-bosnia/
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/fixing-dayton-new-deal-bosnia-and-herzegovina
http://www.afsa.org/dayton-accords-25
https://www.peacefare.net/2020/12/03/dayton-bosnia-is-25-time-to-act-like-an-adult/
https://verfassungsblog.de/time-for-reform-in-bosnia-and-herzegovina/
https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/balkans/bosnia-and-herzegovina/bosnia-s-gordian-knot-constitutional-reform
https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/bosnia-s-future.pdf
Even though all this sounds benign, harmless and boring behind catchphrases like “reforming Bosnia”, “fixing corruption”, “revising Dayton” and etc. it’s extremely sinister and dangerous. They will aim to eliminate and destroy Rebpulika Srpska and any Croat autonomy/self-rule that lets Serbs and Croats in Bosnia have limited means of freedom from Muslims, followed by a NATO annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to further pressure Serbia to end its “military neutrality” and be annexed by NATO. This is especially why they feel the need to destroy Republika Srpska because it has done its best to resist NATO integration and Muslim encroachment. Despite for a few years under some worthless traitor leading Srpska who allowed NATO military exercises with depleted uranium to be done on Manjaca even though NATO bombed it in 1995, Manjaca has stood proudly as an outpost of Serb strength and sovereignty in Bosnia.
https://balkaninsight.com/2019/12/21/reform-program-fails-to-clarify-bosnias-nato-ties/
There are clearly already serious plans to send US and NATO soldiers to Brcko district in advance to try and choke and starve out Republika Srpska to not be able to resist its elimination without war. Although the few hundred NATO troops currently in Bosnia could easily be defeated by Serbs, the problem is that severe economic sanctions on Serbs and way more US ground troops followed by a merciless bombing campaign will come. Even though Serbia has bought Chinese S-300/S-400 equivalents, those need to be physically delivered to Serbia ASAP because they will hopefully serve as a good deterrent to this planned NATO aggression against Serbia and Serbs. If Serbs are currently worth even 1/10th of what their ancestors before 1945 were, then if these plans to destroy Republika Srpska are executed, there will be a 2nd Bosnian War!
Defend Republika Srpska!
When Japan was rising, management practices like kaizen were studied in US business schools, as were in-depth case studies of companies like Toyota. In contrast, there seem to be a relative paucity of studies on Chinese firms and management practices.
Damien Ma, who is one of the few ethnic Chinese in the US establishment who doesn’t seem to suffer from acute self-hatred, has written up a recent analysis on this question:
https://twitter.com/mazzocco_ilaria/status/1334951826530197509
Damien compares the attention given to Toyota and finds no equivalence given to any Chinese firm:
It seems to be a general pattern of low Chinese cultural influence. Dmitry has been talking about this too, but in other areas like music, films etc. It’s a bit puzzling to me.
Geopolitics makes for strange bedfellows? The people of Unz and angry blue haired SJWs finding themselves on the same side of the frontline?
You left out “self-inflicted Luddite dystopia”.
Could it possibly be that I am the last of your (semi) regular readers that doesn’t hate your guts?
No, that is not possible.
Maybe because day in its heyday, the Japanese have a reputation for making products of exceptional quality at an acceptable price (like Toyota technicals in third world countries or Corollas that can pretty much run forever or user-friendly super reliable and predictable daily driver exotic cars like the Acura NSX) that the Chinese do not have? Or maybe the perception that Japanese products have the finesse and sense of delicateness (like the reputation of Kobe steak) that recent Chinese products do not have?
Basically American cars in the 80s were more technologically advanced but somewhat tempermental (like digital dashboards, or the Corvette’s 4+3 transmission), but Japanese cars were a lot more reliable.
Now it’s time for a Serb imitation of Sher Singh posting:
In the war on the area of the former Yugoslavia, numerous crimes were committed. Many people were killed, but many criminals never faced justice. In this, without doubt, participated individuals of all nations. Still, some want to accuse Serbia and the whole Serb nation, for, what they say, was genocide and aggression against other nations and their violently formed states. This lynching, directed against us, lasts even to this day …
Oh Serb, wherever you may be now!
Whatever burden you carry in your heart and soul
History is returning again!
Rise Serb!
It’s the last hour!
They want to take it!
They want to destroy it!
They want it to disappear!
They want to choke it!
Don’t let them take it from us!
Our beloved land!
It’s as nice as a picture!
It’s our Serb Republic!
Defend Republika Srpska!
Young Serbs are dying, for the freedom of the city [Sarajevo]!
Republika Srpska, we are all with you now!
Ringing are the bells, of the churches, of the corridor!
The Serb nation must pass through there!
Against two nations we had to fight to find our salvation!
Defend Republika Srpska!
Interesting. I think this hints at the problem. Pragmatism is local solutions for local problems. You cant really export that. There is no “system”, just a bunch of specific responses, on the fly, to specific problems.
Whats more, the Chinese system seems to not have a central organizing “spiritual principle”, so to speak. The Japanese system, continuous improvement, is an “ideal”, and thus inspiring. Its a spiritual value. I also think the Japanese system was an extension of the Japanese cult of fine craftsmanship, which is also an appealing ideal, and incorporated communitariam aspects of Japanese culture, which also held appeal.
By contrast, the Chinese system seems to be about surviving in an absolutely ruthless business environment. Its Darwinism at its finest. But with no system or vision, it’s just a bunch of immediate responses to local problems. If skillful, it may evoke admiration, but there is nothing to inspire.
China today is pragmatic and ruled by engineers. Engineers are important, but you don’t want that to be your whole approach to life.
What China lacks at the moment, for want of a better term, is “soul”. And that is because the Chinese lack freedom of mind or body, for now.
But perhaps the role of the CCP is to build up China for the time being. Before America acquired soft power, there was a period of concern with pragmatic issues only.
Post-CCP China will be a much more interesting place.
Are these perceptions fair? I’d argue not necessarily.
WSJ had a good article earlier this year on the Chinese ascent to high quality Hi-Fi equipment.
The story contains clues to the puzzle. While China already produces most of the top-end audio equipment, the consumer-facing brands are all non-Chinese (European, Japanese, US). So consumers don’t connect these facts unless they are ultra-enthusiasts. The story made clear that it was possible to buy similar high-quality stuff without the expensive brand name for much cheaper. The problem is that it was quite hard to get your hands on this stuff if you were in the West up until recently.
This seems to be at the heart of the issue. Quality is no longer the binding constraint on Chinese firms. It’s now recognition that is the main challenge, as perceptions lag reality.
In areas like music, films, TV and literature, the story is harder to untangle in my view. Because it’s not clear that it follows the same pattern as in business; where quality is there already but percetions lag due to the aforementioned reasons.
This is exciting:
https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1335064571690696704
There is a nuclear fusion energy project called ITER located in France which has achieved similar milestones earlier (though with significant delays/cost overruns).
EAST, the name of China’s project, is in close collaboration with ITER and has been in commission since 2006. They have had significant milestones in recent years. Unlike what Xinhua implies, EAST has reached nuclear fusion before. For 10 seconds. But that was with an older reactor, and it wasn’t at full strength.
The issue with nuclear fusion is that there has not yet been a single instance of net productive energy, i.e. with more energy output than input. This has not changed yet with EAST. But at least there are now two major competitive projects in the world rather than just one. The rise of China is proving to be a great boon for all sorts of scientific disciplines. Even if the promise of nuclear fusion never materialises, there are significant scientific wins to be gained from studying the plasma in the reactors.
Ah, the hyperinflation enthusiast!
I agree about the need to send robots first. As for extinction, it’s not the extinction as such that worries me but rather population dynamics when it comes to technology. Basically, it appears that any country that is technically advanced to have a space program will have low fertility rates and ageing population which will preclude it from having an ambitious one (US could do a lot more, same with Russia, Japan and Europe, Chinese are good but their numbers of old people are beginning to increase). India may be an exception to this, I don’t know yet. But general trend is concerning.
As for the rest, I remain in the optimist camp. Perhaps not on our lifetime, but within the next few centuries I think humans will colonize the Solar system. If old people vote down space exploration budgets in favor of Medicare etc. it will take longer, but we will get there eventually.
Chinks put themselves on the level of Negros when they respond to any criticism with foul language and claiming it’s “racist”. Then again, Chinks in the West mostly do copy Negro behaviours and “fashions”. Most of them act like higher IQ wannabe Negro plastic “gangstas”.
That is a gross exaggeration. Admiration for the USSR was only ever a fringe phenomenon – unless you are basing your judgement on the opinions of your fellow tribesmen, among whom such admiration was indeed widespread. Also, large numbers of communists were willing to criticize the USSR by the 1970s, even if they still wished for it to prevail over the United States.
America offered the ideals of “liberty” and “making it” (“rags to riches”). Countless millions of worthless riffraff the world over have been inspired to reach American shores on the strength of these ideals. (In contrast, one visit to the USSR was usually sufficient to kill admiration for its vaunted ideals dead on the spot.)
My attitude is generally “fuck China,” but I do welcome its rise because I think it will be a game-changer for western libtards to see a global power which achieved its position all while running roughshod over any number of treasured progressive values.
I mean, the way it has swiftly brought the ban hammer down on its troublesome Whiggers, driven them before its eyes, and delighted in the lamentations of their women, that’s awe-inspiring. If you had asked me before I got wind of it if I though they could do it, I’d have said nah, they wouldn’t risk that, not with the eyes of the world looking on. But, bless ’em, they did it.
There is also a third way. Have your diaspora own all the foreign media, fund the biggest think tanks, and buy off all the politicians, and presto: “soft” power. Israel has #3.
Deranged rightoids claim SJW trannies will destroy US from the inside. Meanwhile, in the real world…
Which brings me to….Green card reform offers hope for hundreds of thousands of Indians in the US.
That’s a compromise bill but more will come, especially with a liberal in the White House. America isn’t being “destroyed”. It’s just getting started.
Look, we shouldn’t stoop to that kind of language here, even if we do prize free speech. The inclusive term for the diverse cultures that make up far east asia is: Chinx.
You know, Twitter may be SJW central, but fuck me if it hasn’t made foreign relations more entertaining than ever. Imagine we had this shit during WW2. (Underground livestreams of nazi gassings anyone?)
Do you really see Walmart and Amazon hiking prices and wages by 100% daily? This is what we would need for hyperinflation. It may happen but o doubt it.
Anyway, hyperinflation is not the end of the world. They are fast and generally economically beneficial .
Even in Zimbabwe, they had economic depression for years, hyperinflation ended that and put them on solid growth path that only ended in 2019.
https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/gdp-growth-annual
I think they are going to do another one.
This could be dangerous. Without all of these cars, will peaceful protesters have to start burning people?
He also claimed the economy would collapse if Trump was elected in 2016, and would never recover.
How does this idiot even have a job?
Why so seething?
No falling out – although TF often makes good posts, he has a long record of gaslighting and strawmanning me (despite my own, up until now highly restrained behavior towards him, including my consistent dismissal of the popular conspiracy theory that he’s Indian).
I have progressively lost patience with it and started rejoindering more aggressively.
I realize you were seething and coping hard when Trump lost, no hard feelings from me towards you on that score.
BECAUSE China is not a vassal of the US and so it’s uncouth to teach anything about China’s progress in China. It’s moot anyways as China does not care one iota that the West adopts it’s policies.
You and AaronB still think it’s a high school popularity contest. The West is that hot chick that everyone grovels over while the Chinese is that nerd in the corner that everyone mocks. The Chinese do not care you think that way.
I thought he was an Indian in Sweden (probably born there). He isn’t?
You nailed it.
What we are looking at in America (and probably the rest of the “developed” world as well) is the classic third world economy of a small number of very wealthy folks, a small middle class (most .gov bureaucracy and corporate middle manager types), and a very large lower class.
The political implications are obvious–chaos theory for the foreseeable future.
Think car bombs like this one:
https://twitter.com/NetworksManager/status/1335106712026689536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1335106712026689536%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waynedupree.com%2F2020%2F12%2Fharrison-deal-car-crash-video%2F
If the population decreases, while the overall level of technological efficiency increases, we will have no need for space colonization. We will probably send robotic space drones to mine the asteroids for rare resources that would have become depleted on Earth. There is a high probability that piloting these space drones would be done by IA with only minimal human intervention.
We could exist as a species during a million years using the resources of the Solar system. It’s more than enough a time frame for humans to figure out anything they are capable of understanding.
He literally speaks about “whitoids,” no ethnic Swede would use that word. Ive been quite a lot in Scandinavia, and I can assure you that the Thulean/Uttarakuru friend is not a Swede. In all likehood he is an Indian living in a Nordic country, which is not a problem itself. He also has strong affinity towards Hinduism and strong dislike of Islam, especially of the Islam in India.
But its quite hypocritical that the talks in derogatory way about whites and Christianity and uses name “Thulean friend.” Which implies that he has no confidence in his Indian identity so he masquerades as a Scandinavian. Maybe he thinks that he is then more trustworthy or prestigious, or something?
Thulean friend I often enjoy your posts, but really change your name or at least be honest of you being an Indian.
lol, I don’t hate AK’s guts. If I did, I’d obviously not read his takes, some of which are good and some of which are not good. He’d obviously prefer if I told him I always agreed with him, but that would be me lying to him and wouldn’t that be a bigger insult? When I praise, he knows it is genuine.
I also think he has very high standards for himself (a classic symptom of procrastination is not laziness as commonly assumed, but demands of perfection), so he tends to take criticism very personally and in my view overly emotionally.
It appears the banal truth – I’m a Swede in Sweden – is unconvincing to everyone. I find this both bizarre and mildly amusing.
Thanks for clarifying (I assume people are honest, until shown otherwise). You must admit that your knowledge of Indian issues and consistent pro-Hindu perspective (which includes particular disdain of Hindus’ enemies) makes the assumption that you are an Indian, if even by descent, to be a reasonable one.
My take is a naturalized Swede of Indian ethnicity.
I think the comparisons with Japan are possibly even unfair. While it may sound strange, wouldn’t America be the natural comparison?
Carl Zha (who was born in China, came to the US as a teenager and now lives in Indonesia while frequently visiting friends and relatives in China) says that the two countries share a lot more culturally in common than typically perceived.
You speak of pragmatism, and I think of the US ethos. If you read European elite opinions of the US from a hundred years ago, everyone was scoffing at the unsophisticated Yankee rubes. But Americans have always been pragmatic and humble tinkerers with little patience for Grand Theories. Edison is the quintessential example.
In some ways, Japan reminds me more of Germany. Like them, it is a fairly culturally isolationist country with a long traditions of excellence in precision engineering. Big countries tend to have different cultural norms for reasons of expediency. I don’t think there is an ur-Chinese cultural trait. Rather, just adapted cultural practices to evolving exigencies of being a really big fucking country, with all that such a matter entails.
Tangential to this, one of the worst Chinese contributions to world history was China’s role in promoting the spread of Islam in SE Asia. Imagine how better the world would have been, had all of massive Indonesia been like Bali mixed with large Catholic enclaves?
Theres a big difference with the present situation with a China and with the past situation with the Soviet Communism. There was a real threat of violent revolution in thr Europe of the 20s and 30s, and even for a some time after WWII in the Italy and France, so the capitalist class truly feared for its survival, but now China is more of a competitor, so the pressure is very different from that of the past. After all there is no fear that if you slightly mistreat your workers that they will establish workers councils and rebel in the name of the Peoples Republic, Hah thats laughable.
High quality? In Europe major source of support for communism was literally a proletarian working class, okay there were some artists and few intellectuals, but vast majority of learned classes and bourgeoisie were against communism, the situation changed in the 60s, but thats an another story.
In USA communism was even more marginal, mainly supported by the downtrodden blacks, jews and poor migrants from Europe. There was another much more respectable and peaceful manifestation of socialism in Europe, the Social Democracy, it truly enjoyed large support among both intellectuals and workers of Europe. So you are really overgeneralizing the Jewish experience and claiming that they were “high quality people” in comparison to others.
Okay svensk pojke, when you were teenager what snus did you use and why people of Skåne sound so funny? The clock is ticking, show me that you are descendant of karoliner! Oh one more, how your Systembolaget works, how strong alcohol can you buy there when you are 18.
A practice redolent of maleficent macacas, I note.
His attention to and awareness of events Indian is something I used to find strange, but simply put it down to his quirky, pseudo-faggoty personality – certainly no normally functioning person would show any interest that giant toilet bowl.
I’m afraid the circumstantial evidence is mounting steadily, so you may wish to reconsider your dismissals of these “conspiracy” theories for the sake of your own reputation, which, I hasten to remind you, took something of a hit with the lack of commiseration you evinced in the wake of the stolen election.
Despite what you might think, I didn’t take that personally. Others may have, but not I. I simply said to myself, AK, he is just one of those people who loves “being right.” He predicted a Biden win and now he has to play the part of victor – no point being right if you’re deprived of the spoils of victory.
I wasn’t coping hard btw. I was massively bummed though. I had gone to bed thinking Trump won and the next day I’d just prepared some cheesecake and a coffee and had sat down at the computer and told myself I’m just briefly going to log into Twitter for a quick hit of elation, when what do I see, Biden is now gaining/leading in Georgia (or wherever the fuck)??? WHAT?!?!? What a kick in the guts. Not only was I seething, I felt like a damn fool because the previous day I had been poking fun at libtards for coping – ouch.
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1317058379370561536?s=20
The majority of kids around me in the Soviet 80ies were quite optimistic about the future. It only really changed in the early 90ies which was my coming of age period.
I can’t say that I am a pessimist today, more of a well informed realist.
Can’t disagree with that. Life is uncertain in both its good and bad aspects.
It is only logical that you have to reach a fairly high level of development before you can hope to make much of a contribution in pushing the state of the art. When Japan began to make an impact, it was relatively farther along than China is today.
Remember, the per capita GDP of China is still only about as much as Bulgaria – it is only because of its huge size that China already is such a massive factor in the world economy. In any comparison between Japan and China you should never forget the 11 times difference in population!
https://www.unz.com/?s=wheatish&Action=Search&ptype=all&commentsearch=only&commenter=Thulean+Friend
Even if he did use the screen name “Thulean Friend”, he could just admit his Indian background.
Why only a million years? Why not until the sun burns out? (Not necessarily on Earth the whole time, but somewhere within our solar system.) That would be ample time to fabricate and bioengineer a series of ‘stepping-stone’ artificial planets, replete with real gravity, in all directions towards neighboring star systems.
Excuse me what? The Islamization of Malays is much more complicated topic than that. The spread of cultural and religious influences were from west to east in the Indian ocean, so Indian Muslim merchants are much bigger reason than couple of Chinese pseudo-Muslims like Zheng He.
Whose ox is being gored by China’s social credit system? And who benefits? As opposed to the blue’s system in the US?
Come on, “I’m a Swede in Sweden” could be technically true if he has a Swedish citizenship. Remember the Afroscience guy? He was French who happened to be adopted from Haiti by a French couple.
Thulean Friend did not state what is his race. No lefty white Swede would comment at racialist site like the UR. He would die of vomiting. A rigthoid white Swede commenting here would not be trolling with the progressive crap. But a Hindu Dindu Swede even a progressive one might be attracted to this site because of his etno-racial, even if only residual, chauvinism. Thulean Friend’s progressivism that includes anti-racism is no different than Jewish progressivism of the 20ths century that was solely motivated by ethnic and chauvinist interests that were packed in many layers of dissimulation and self-deception. All anti-racisms are racists.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQyZeCGliF_ecYR30KiCjkoTtIrM4ZQrMKbZQ&usqp.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSNpwZm5luZsyrDjnzg7Y9Hje7vwB4YS1J04w&usqp.jpg
Yep, I do agree that China most resembles America. Thats why I always understood why people would dislike both China and America, but people who think China is a positive alternative to America strike me as fools.
I defend America against China, because I think China is a more intense version of America on the things I dislike; ruthless competition, money and business more important than beauty and leisure, obsession with technology, soulless, aggressive, bureaucratic. And because I think America is moving – slowly- away from these things, while China is moving towards them.
But I am a not a defender of American culture. I do think there is one key difference that makes America more appealing though; greater anarchy and less government control leading to creativity and a greater sense of personal freedom.
The Chinese word for America means beautiful country and I think China modeled itself on the US. Another similarity between the two is a self-conscious break with their inherited Old World traditions, and the adoption of some kind of philosophy based on enlightenment principles.
Yes, Americans were indeed famously pragmatic. I think the Cold War is what made America ideological. In a certain sense, though, America was always ideological because it was based on an explicit break with tradition and based on enlightened principles instead. But this element only came to the fore later.
Agree also about Germany and Japan. Both countries have a rigid, regimented side to them but also a very deep Romantic side. And they both have a word for a peculiarly significant emotion – a strange, mysterious yearning. Yugen in Japanese and – I think- sensucht? In German. Precision engineering is I think a cultural trait, too, and not simply a matter of IQ.
Lower map is Indonesian nationalist and/or Islamist propaganda.
Malay peninsula and Sumatra were once Buddhist lands, so sad what we have lost. Even such great masters like Tilopa and Atisha studied there.
There were even Buddhist majority lands in the Philippines. Oh well one day, one day…
https://cdn.britannica.com/23/13123-050-3DC3FF1C/stupa-complex-Borobudur-Java-Indonesia.jpg
It doesn’t happen that often, but we agree on something :)…
Yes, it was complicated, Chinese were not the main driver – but they did play a critical role. Without Chinese interference, I’m not sure Islam would have triumphed almost everywhere. Would Muslim traders alone have overcome the Hindus and Portuguese?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323600414_The_Imprint_of_Zheng_He_and_Chinese_Muslims_in_Indonesia's_Past
In the towns I visited there are stories of charismatic historical figures of Chinese Muslims linked to the Zheng He naval expedition. They, according to the oral traditions, had contributed to the creation of a Sino-Indonesian/Javanese Muslim culture and Islamization of the people in the area. Among these cities, the Sultanate of Demak (known Demak Bintoro) deserves special attention for its central role in toppling the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom Majapahit (c. 1478). The collapse of the Majapahit Empire marked the transition from Hindu-Buddha to Islam in Java’s social history.
Under the control of the Chinese Muslim regime, Demak was central in spreading Islamic supremacy over Banten, Cirebon, Jepara, Lasem, Tuban, Gresik and Surabaya, all of which became small Islamic sultanates. The founder of Demak, Raden Patah himself was identified as a Chinese Muslim (some have argued that he was a Cina totok while the other regarded him a peranakan). See the discussion of his origins in Qurtuby (2003, 2009). During the struggle against the Portuguese, the regime in Demak had collaborated with Chinese communities that had existed for centuries before and were renowned for their ability in shipbuilding and forging weapons.
Etc. etc.
Agree with that.
BTW a lot of people are unaware of the fact that the Oort Cloud of the Solar System probably extends all the way out to the near vicinity of Oort Clouds of the nearest neighbouring stars. There is probably not much empty space between adjacent Solar systems.
OTOH, what’s the point of survival as a biological entities if humans would have already understood all they coulf ever fathom in the physical reality?
Perhaps, by then human beings would start alter the fabric of the space-time itself. And all of this can be done without leaving our planet.
But as I wrote before, I doubt that we have as a species what is needed to get there.
The extent of islam in West Papua is also exaggerated in the that map.
Maybe some other time we will argue about this, its just, at least to me, its just as clear historically that Islam came to Indonesia from the west to east, as the Christianity came from the east to the west. Local merchant communities of Indian Ocean were totally controller by the Muslims, Aceh and Malay peninsula got Islamized first and they were the strategic nexus for the spreading of Islam and the epicentre of trade between India and China. Im not going to argue more about something that is so clear and elementary.
Zheng He by the way was polytheist in reality, he worshipped Mazu and chanted Buddhist mantras, so his Islam was quite different from Hadramauti, Yemeni and Gujarati Muslim merchants. So tiresome….
So you’re pretending to be with globohomo on the Belorussian front but against globohomo on the home and Hungarian fronts? Either one or more of these fights is fake, or the situation is strategically unsustainable.
Throw in a battalion of zombies with halberds and an UFO or two, and you could make a fine B movie out of this. Wouldn’t beat African Kung Fu Nazis though:
Not all, total control came later with the aid of China. The point is that the Chinese intervention was enough to alter the balance of power in favor of the Muslims. No Demak, and Java likely remains Hindu/Buddhist like Bali. No alliance with China, and the Muslims might not have been able to withstand the Portuguese (who were allied with the Hindus).
Which doesn’t change the fact that Chinese contribution was critical to Islam’s triumph in Indonesia.
No, you got this wrong. It is precisely by lending deposits that banks create money ex nihilo.
Deposits are bank promises that our balances in their checking accounts are at our disposal any time we want to withdraw them. But in reality they only hold (by laws enforced by central banks) 2-4% of our deposits so if a good number of people try to withdraw their money, banks need to close down and ask to be bailed out, as Greeks and Cypriots found out some years ago. Most of our money is actually gone in the form of commercial loans.
This is the fiat money system that our economy operates on but, ironically, you seem to share the widespread and likely correct view that this reserve-fraction system is behind the business cycle.
You have some very strange ideas. In spite of being aware of the above, you want to have a system even more based on fiat money and you want to make banks operate in a full reserve fashion but have central banks take up their role in injecting even more massive amounts of liquidity in the economy. I don’t know how you expect that not to create the very same economic bubbles that commercial and central banks in tandem have been creating up to now.
I just have a university degree in economics, which means that I realize that I don’t really know much about the economy and I don’t have the same certitudes that you have. But it might be interesting if you provided some link to the sources of your ideas. Hopefully something academic and not some blog.
PS- The liquidity trap was discovered generations ago. After a recession and/or in the presence of very high levels of private debt, making interest rates arbitrarily small does not make people spend more. Nothing new under the sun there at all.
If you wait long enough, stars actually pass through the Oort cloud.
For example, Gliese 710 is expected to come within about 0.18 light years of the sun. (or about 1/20 of the distance of Proxima Centauri) But that is in about 1.28 million years.
The last star to pass closer than Proxima Centauri was only about 15,000 years ago. Van Maanen’s Star. It passed within 3.1 light years of the sun.
Maybe lol was too rude from me, I will debate later about this with you.
A Swede who was that obsessed with India would have moved to India, long ago.
And likely, in a haze, would have fallen into a vat of curry and drowned, while trying to drink his fill.
Oh we will. The Puritans did not leave the Netherlands for New World because they ran out of space or food or whatever.
They were hiding out in the Netherlands because they didn’t like being bossed around by the English authorities and then they got pissed off by the Dutch government as well.
Human civilization on planet Earth is going to converge at some point, our friendly Thulean Friends protestations notwithstanding. There will be a McDonalds in Antarctica and Amazonian tribals will be forced to identify correct gender pronouns. Africans will drive Chinese EV cars powered by Rosatom Corporation. It will all kinda blend together.
Just like Puritans, a lot of people will be pissed by this new world order. Multipolarity will not help because if other blocks want to survive they also will have adopt “best practice” management at some point. There will be some differences between Chinese and Russian bosses, but in the long run they will be minor.
At some point, the option of becoming a squid on Europa will become more attractive than dealing with Medicare Billing Assistants all your life. People will leave.
Yeah, I don’t know if Gliese 710 has any planets but it will be worthwhile sending a generation ship to it if it does. Humanity can become interstellar species on the cheap.
Karlin keeps saying that poland is ahead of russia in gdp because of european gibs. That’s bullshit, here’s why.
In 2004-2018 Poland receive a net of 107 billion euros. Proof: https://www.case-research.eu/files/?id_plik=6170
In the same time frame russian federal budget income from oil and gas was approx 70 trillion rubles.
Proof: https://minfin.gov.ru/ru/statistics/fedbud/execute/?id_65=80041-yezhegodnaya_informatsiya_ob_ispolnenii_federalnogo_byudzhetadannye_s_1_yanvarya_2006_g.
Lets assume the average eur/rub exchange rate of 50, that comes to 1.4 trillion euros.
107/40 M poles = 2675
1400/145 M russians = 9655
This demonstrates that Russia received more that 3 times the windfall poland did but has been and keeps falling behind. The reason is simple: Vlad Putin’s greed and incompetence.
Keep in mind the above calculation is heavily conservative e.g. doesnt take into account the consolidated budget oil and gas revenue, the metal and fertiliser windfall, the fact that real (ppp) ruble exchange rate is much lower than nominal one. In reality the difference is not 3.5 but 5-7 times in favour of russia and yet… All this staggering amount of cash has been plundered.
And indeed this sad sad statistic is pushing all the Karlin’s buttons, making him have to come up with desperate made up reasons why poland is ahead. B-but muh eurogibs, cmon man, enough with this malarkey
What makes you so sure the Chinese will select the Russians as the “chosen ones” to rule the great mass of humanity along side them?
I notice that seems to be the main hope of a lot of Russian nationalists, that China will make them relevant out of some sort of perceived ideological kinship. The idea that the Chinese will see the Russians as different to the other “white devils”.
I guess it’s not surprising though, when you’ve got a powerful, technologically advanced country of 1.4 billion on your border, I suppose that’s probably the best outcome you can hope for.
I thought about it. This is actually a valid reason: social and civilizational exit.
Just like Old Believers moving further into the Russian wilderness to run from the diktat of Nikonian Church and Tsardom.
But to get into space you need a lot of technology, so it will be difficult for the dissident communities to master it without the help of TNCs and state/government actors.
BTW that’s how the Schizmatrix lore supposedly starts: after the disastrous ecological effects of certain technologies become apparent, Earthlings decide to stop technological progress. Those who wish to pursue the development of disruptive technology are kindly asked to evacuate the premises.
This might happen: extreme environmental control, ecological totalitarianism are possible.
It’s a weird part of Unz Review culture. If someone disagrees with you it’s not possible that it’s a genuine disagreement in good faith. If they disagree it must be because of some personal bias. If someone suggests that the Holocaust actually happened, that person must be a Jew. If someone suggests that Muslims are not totally evil, that person must be a Muslim. If someone suggests that capitalism has some major problems, that person must be a communist.
I got accused of being both Chinese and a communist for suggesting that China is probably not intending to invade Australia.
I think it’s probably the kind of culture you’ll always get when you have a tiny group of people who hold fairly extreme beliefs and just can’t deal with the fact that most people think their beliefs are crazy.
There is a kind of right-wing Orientalism when it comes to perceptions of Japan by hard right and white nationalist types.
Contemporary Japan is regarded as castrated and housebroken, so it’s no longer seen as the Yellow Peril as it was as recently as the 80s and had been before then. That role is now played by China.
Right wingers in the contemporary liberal, multicultural West engage in a kind of right wing Orientalism whereby homogeneous Japan serves as a right wing model or foil to the contemporary West. They typically know very little about Japan, nor about how rightists and white nationalists before them tended to view Japan just a few decades ago. They’re just familiar with a few vague tropes and the fact that Imperial Japan was allied with Nazi Germany during WWII, and construct a right wing Orientalist view of Japan.
Useless comparison. EU-gibs is shorthand for much more than direct financial aid.
Might be worth going to, even if it doesn’t have planets. Just to use as a way station.
That is, assuming there are asteroids close enough to the star, to make it possible to use solar energy to process the mass.
And assuming we are still around then, and can do it. Thousands of years of observations might allow us to create maps, which would allow us to chart a course from Gliese 710 to a star with an earth-like planet.
If you didn’t want to be mocked, you should stop writing weirdly circuitous screeds that are so easy to mock. The entire effort to pretend at a No True Scotsman Defense isn’t much better. I don’t really give much emotion to your rambles(which have only faint, accidental brushes with reality), believe it or not, but the generalized stupidity and the openings you present tend to ask for the typical five-ten second rebuttal.
There are places in this world without monoliths/Maenhirs?
I don’t think commodities will collapse because of a trade dispute with China.
I think commodities will collapse in general largely because the world has been building like crazy for the past 20 years.
Also, China is sourcing iron ore from Guinea which is a higher grade than what you can get in Australia. That source might be 5 years away, but Australia should be maximizing its exports now so that 5 years from now it won’t be left in the dark.
Australia did massive damage to its environment by clear cutting trees to make room for farms and livestock.
That is one of the reasons Australia faces such severe drought and fires.
Well, part of this is absolutely true; while Japan initially took total quality management(really what would become the most signature part of Japanese manufacture) from Americans like Demings, they implemented it in a serious and substantial way that they very much owned it. This is, incidentally, an excellent rebuttal of claims of people like AaronB on the unimportance of manufacturing – like many things, you can only learn to really improve on a process once you are actually implementing it(thus supporting the Fredrich Listian school of thought that knowledge is a capital good gained from implementation). The theory of TQM may have come from the US, but only in actually implementing it, could the Japanese discover how to practically use it to both quality and cost advantage.
By and large, China just doesn’t seem to have as good of a management practice in its manufacturing, so its unfortunately more akin to the fact that there’s a lot of chaos rather than actually good technocratic management. While China does have high quality products and is getting better at it, the general mentality of quality management and process improvement is still quite weak, and very few product managers seem to perceive that it is actually a means of cost savings.
That said, there are examples of Chinese innovations, especially in ecommerce which are studied in the West. A simple example are American apps copying features from the more developed e-commerce app ecosystem in China, as well as other technology vendors copying solutions from Chinese apps on scaling(which I can’t find a link for). In both cases, you see a similar case with the Japanese processes – by having an ecosystem where they were implementing things that Western ecosystems didn’t have(more e-commerce integration in China, larger demands for scaling in China), in those aspects, they advance further and have lessons to provide.
AaronB if only you knew how much of a clone you are of every other China hater out there.
We get it. You vastly prefer the China of yore that worked in sweatshops and wasn’t threatening the west position of power.
You should have been in China 20 years ago. China today has progressed beyond that stage and they are not going back because some white expat is bitter.
Banks lend first, proceeds from their loans create deposits in the banking system. Though I think we are trying to say the same thing. 🙂
I think reserve requirement is 0% now (corona chan made it happen) but it doesnt matter because modern banking (after 2008) switched to excess reserve regime (Fed simply floods the banks with $trillions whenever they feel like it and pays them interest so they don’t use them) so deposits and savings are not important anymore. Which is why banks offer glorious 0.1% yield on savings accounts – they don’t care, they don’t need your deposits anymore. Savings are for losers who don’t get it.
The only ratio that matters for the banks is capital ratio. They need 5% (I think it’s in Basel 3 regulations) of equity and retained earnings against their assets (loans that they make). And that’s how banks (including Cypriot) can go bad. Lending creates money, debt repayment destroys money, but debt defaults hit the banks where it hurts – earnings and thus capital ratio. And because each $dollar of earnings back up to $20 of assets, it can get ugly real fast.
Well bubbles happen when asset price growth far outpaces income growth. By pumping money to the bottom, you guarantee income growth, your assets then must deliver magical results to create a bubble. Dow 400,000 in 5 years or something. But even if it does happen, and bubble then deflates, income guarantee will prevent it falling too far down because corporations will still be profitable. The poors will spend their income guarantee to satisfy their “unlimited wants” :). This will support corporate enterprise values.
Well I’m not an economist, just a chemical engineer, so I view money from the perspective of flows. I derive my ideas from observation of reality and occasional reading on rules and regulations. My views are mostly actually fairly right wing libertarian economically – I oppose minimum wage, excessive regulations on business, I like corporations (corporation is probably the most significant social innovation in human history ), and I think excess taxes on the rich are silly (look up Hausers law to see why).
But from simple flow view point, money needs to move (they even call it “liquidity”) or it’s useless. We are not going back to gold standard, so money will always be fiat. Because of that, we know that we will always create money out of nothing, in unlimited quantity (just over a long time period).
It then becomes very simple – which group of humans is best positioned to make that free infinite money move? Right now, it’s the poors. The banks and the rich are not helpful. So we need to pump money into the poor instead of the rich and banks to drive sales, corporate profits, and GDP higher. Simple.
Liquidity trap is masturbatory garbage invented by the banks and the rich to excuse them not doing their job. The rich don’t spend because they are comfortable, not because they have preference for cash. If they had preference for cash, they wouldn’t be buying junk bonds at negative interest rates. The rich know they can always print more cash for themselves (Fed bailouts etc). But that’s fine, it’s their business. The poors don’t spend because they have no income, not because they have preference for cash. Now this is something we can and should address. Hence basic income guarantee.
Thulean friend, I feel the same about you.
You are a reasonable person to talk to about everything but India.
Russia has 4 times forex reserves and 2-3 times less debt compared to Poland. Poland runs budget deficit (helps GDP growth), Russia runs budget surplus (hurts GDP growth). Polish interest rate (before corona chan) was 1.5%, Russian more like 6-7%.
Fiscal and monetary policy preferences can explain the difference in GDP growth rates between two countries. No need to invoke fantastical “plunder”.
https://www.newgrange.com/images/megalithic-map.jpg
https://www.newgrange.com/megalithic.htm
Someone I know quite well and trust, told me that when he worked in Sahara as a geologist, he often saw Nabta Playa type stone circles and Bet Il type menhirs. Often both types of stone structures were erected near tumuli. Ancient Berber usually reproduced the form of a tumulus for their royal tombs.
https://www.amicalefrancophonetaroudant.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Pyramide-de-Medghassen.jpg
I was talking about multipolarity, China will be its own power center, and Russia will be its own. Smaller than China of course, but large enough that Chinese won’t be able to afford the luxury of pissing off the Russians.
I am not a nationalist, but I’m bullish on Russia, and I think it will become “Canada with teeth” in the decades ahead. Its the “teeth” part that makes Russia a major world power.
Responding to bunch:
“Sher Singh posting”? I’m not on 15 lvl cope that whiteoid Desh with pop of my left nut matters..
The entire Balkans & Baltics together has less people than NY, who gives a fk??
Beyond providing strangely retarded white pussy..
Wtf has their post-christian history been?
Singhs marched on Delhi, gov backed down..
Whiteoids cope how 1% Singh control 10-15% (double cuz of FPTP) seats in CA/UK
Singhs carry Sabres in countries with butter knife license
Trump lost, Indian is going to be 3rd largest minority after Black/Mexi soon..
Pak elite is turning Sikh LOL
I’m not some retarded revanchist, reality on ground is we sh#t on street, u lie with your face in it….
Great-Bifurcation
https://twitter.com/search?q=%40akarlin88%20bifurcation&src=typed_query&f=live
Bonus: Speaking of Santa Hat, stealin Indo-Iranian swag:
https://twitter.com/jvalaaa/status/1314307436547723264?s=20
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
Because Japan is the only non-white country that reached a higher level of cultural development in the modern epoch (in the 20th century). So there is an unusual perspective for European observers, of perceiving a non-white country which doesn’t have a low modern cultural level.
We perceive that Japan is almost as advanced as a West European country, has a connoisseur culture, and portrays self-confidence about its uniqueness and idiosyncrasies.
Self confidence about cultural eccentricity, is probably correlating to being an island, and it’s similar to Great Britain in this aspect. Japan and England are the two countries where eccentricity is idealized, and these are possibly the two cultures which are romanticized most easily by the rest of the world.
In addition, Japan has aspects of connoisseur culture, which is similar to Italy (in visual culture and cuisine), and aspects of high quality engineering and manufacturing culture which resemble modern German culture (for example, in pianos, optics) .
–
Our perceptions also transfer in a fetishistic way onto objects, and object fetishism is one of the easiest ways to see how people feel about countries. If you open your fridge and see it is full of a row of Asahi Super Dry bottles, somehow your fridge looks more attractive, than if you had bottles of Heineken.
I have an unopened bottle of Suntory whisky and my tendency is to leave the bottle unopened in kitchen as a visual decoration. On the other hand, I receive often bottles of Polish liquid like cherry vodka, and my unconscious tendency is to hide the Polish alcohol on the bottom of the cupboard. Here you can see where you brain is cargo culting about inanimate objects, based on whether you received positive or negative national stereotypes.
And these 1950s views, seem strange and dated when we see them now. It reminds me of reading a 1920s novel by Scott Fitzgerald, where a character in the novel is talking about they should hire a poor Swedish servant girl. (I was thinking “poor Swedish servant”? This concept of poor Swedish servants, sounds strange for modern ears, although not in 1920s USA).
In terms of Hollywood films, the last negative films about Japanese I’ve seen are “Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961).
“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” is ironic, because a film is beloved with Japanese women, who try to copy the clothing of Audrey Hepburn. Her character suffers under a rude Japanese peasant housemaster. But this peasant Japanese housemaster, doesn’t match to our modern stereotypes . Since 1980s perhaps, our stereotype that Japanese people are polite, wear clean suits, and will not be seen without a packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes.
“Bridge on the River Kwai” is almost a propaganda idealization of an English gentleman pretending to be criticism of him, and contrasts to this primitive Japanese peasant soldiers (who are claiming to be samurai). It’s like watching English gentleman stereotypes trying to defeat Japanese samurai stereotypes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdycEK_38Y.
Lol arguing again about whether Thulean Friend is Indian?
It doesn’t seem like complicated internet epistemology. Fact he is talking about English language sources about India, indicates he is perhaps/probably not Indian. If he was Indian, he wouldn’t be able to avoid reading half his time in Hindi, and therefore would be more giving us more localized information, based on his exposure native Indian sources.
His internet feed would be at least half in Indian languages. It’s impossible to escape your native language on the internet, even when you are trying to learn other languages. It’s far more comfortable and effortless to read the internet in your native language, even if you have a very high level in other languages.
Whereas instead he recommends to read English language sources about India. Previously his name was “Polish Perspective” and he was recommending always to read English sources about India. For example, https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-39/#comment-2282248
Of course, it’s quite a childish reaction, because the value of our time on internet forums is to talk to people you disagree with, and who have unusual views.
If we don’t find people with different views, this forum would be rapidly very boring and a waste of time, even from the entertainment perspective.
Aside from the value of eccentricity, Thulean also has adds a lot of sources and some references to books he reads – he’s one of name when I’m scrolling through the forum, I often don’t skip from reading.
Moreover, if Thulean Friend was Indian, then that would be a good thing from the point of view of making his posts about India more informative (while the sad reality he recommends English sources, shows he likely is Swedish/Polish, and not such an “expert” about India).
I have worked in a wonderful TQM environment in my younger days–an amazing experience that would be a great benefit to everyone.
The Japanese had a huge advantage because they did not have to try to implement it in a “diverse” US environment.
The “dead wood” gets super-obvious very quickly when that type of teamwork is required.
In the US it becomes necessary to quietly create sub-groups (with no “diversity”) to deal with the very tough tasks.
Our team accomplished true miracles in its day–it finally died because the leaders moved on to other pursuits and were replaced by idiots. We worked around the clowns as best we could, but eventually they insisted on being in the room–and we were doomed.
The Japanese also had the advantage that after WW2, their factories were destroyed so they could rebuild to spec from scratch.
Maybe Detroit should try that strategy.
I keep your powerful takes in a folder for posterity.
The amount of money the EU is moving around is not that much. While 12b for Poland and 5b for Hungary and 3b for Greece is better than nothing 17b for Germany and its economy is not really much. Germany collects 16b in excise tax from petrol sales and 3.5b from alcohol sales.
https://i.ibb.co/2KNLQXy/18794.jpg
The sum of nets for donor states is about 50b. So basically only 50b of wealth is redistributed. In 2017 EU budget was 158b out of which supposedly only 6% went to administration.
Overall the EU as a project seems to be really cheap. Its chief product is not the money it redistributes but thousands and thousands of laws and administrative procedures it creates every year that are translated into all EU languages and ratified by parliaments of all countries and implement by administrations of all countries.
Probably China will start to seem more attractive to us, if/when it becomes an economically developed country. Political system has a role in its current lack of attraction, but the economics is likely more significant.
I will be labelled as a “barbaric materialist” to say this – but economic development level is one of the preconditions in the 21st century for successful “soft power”. As a case study for comparison, we might look at South Korea, which became a developed country, and subsequently their popular culture became more appealing to middle class youth around the world in the last decade.
–
In this forum, people often don’t understand a distinction between GDP and GDP per capita. GDP refers to the size of an economy, while GDP per capita is result of dividing GDP by population. It’s the latter measurement which can roughly indicate economic development in a country.
China has a large GDP (due to large population), but the GDP per capita is still low (in the sense of being the same as lower-middle income level countries – e.g. Mexico).*
As China becomes more developed economically, then we will start to see more externally aspects of bourgeois culture. This is what Karlin has used the term to describe the extreme embourgeoisement in central Moscow – “Stuff White People Like”.
Modernization and industrialization at the lower level of economic development, provides more dystopian aspects, than in wealthy countries.
Reason the dystopian prefabricated housing in the Soviet Union of Khrushchev’s epoch onwards is less aesthetically attractive than the equivalent epoch buildings in Switzerland, is not because of lack of taste – but because of what could be afforded in terms of architecture for mass housing in the middle income Soviet Union, compared to high income Switzerland.
–
When/if China reaches to the Portugal level, then we might expect change in the demographic that their cultural production will be attractive to (even assuming no political changes). There has been already such a situation with South Korea’s culture.
https://i.imgur.com/JDaZKiW.jpg
Japanese have done it again – they brought aliens to Earth! :). Well, to Australia, so it barely counts.
https://www.space.com/japan-hayabusa2-asteroid-samples-land-australia
Better find it before the kangaroos do.
You have an outmoded Marxist view about the communication here. It does not occur between rational corporeal entities. First there is no communication. Second the exchanges are parts of a sequence of concatenated texts. Each text has an emergent lyrical subject. The lyrical subjects are in search of intimacy. Since fucking somebody is not possible in the realm of textual existence fucking with somebody becomes the highest attainable form of intimacy. Text entities that delay the emergence of the lyrical subject are Turing test flunkees whether of AI or HI kind.
Mr. Doom, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed came to my mind. It is about you and your fantasy. A farewell by the western intelligentsia to the dream of just and equal world. It was 45 years ago.
https://i1.wp.com/outsider.si/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Kowloon-Walled-City-vir-Wikipedia.jpg
Witness urban sprawl left unchecked by the civility of roads and parking. Filth and peasantry climbing on top of each other, walling themselves off from light and air like cockroaches. I’m sure the pinnacle of beauty by your judgement, no doubt the tinge of slime green and shit brown are signs of vigorous health.
If they abolish public transportation there would be more space for cars to park in cities. The bus depots that house buses and trams. The underground subway tunnels DIRECTLY under cities. All wasted square footage that would easily park millions of cars. Overnight you’d have long stretches of cheap, accessible parking in the heart of the city. Yet I am forced to illegally park in the handicap spot because assholes like you won’t assimilate with technology and grow up.
You just suffer from European roads, which are retardedly tiny and make driving seem like an overt homosexual act. Europeans seem to be averse to laying long stretches of straight (heh) normal-human roads to let you rip it and enjoy the drive. It’s all gay roundabouts and speed bumps and school zone nonsense. If you drove on normal roads you’d see that cars in cities is as natural as peanut butter and jelly. I too would be frustrated having to deal with cyclists pretending to be cars, clueless blind pedestrians too ignorant of their own mortality or parallel park like I live in Japan and sleep in a closet. But it’s not all that bad in the real world (drive-thru, underground parking, inner-city highways, roads wider than a horse carriage, apps to find parking/speed traps/construction/accidents/road blockage).
Does not sound plausible based on my experience. I had four Chinese post-docs and one Chinese graduate student. Four out of these five were in the upper quartile of the people I had in the lab. All worked hard and behaved like normal people. One former post-doc is already an Assistant Professor in another University (in the US, as a rule, every step of your career is in a different place; in contrast to Europe, permanent positions in the US are exclusively at cemeteries), and two more have PI potential.
I also think you over-generalize about Negroes. My best tech was a black girl from Cameroon. In fact, I interviewed a black American guy for this position right before her. He certainly did not measure up. After her interview the choice was easy. The results showed that my choice was correct. She worked very hard (having two kids and a husband) and behaved absolutely normally. I hired her to manage our colony of genetically modified mice (genotype, set up necessary breeding pairs, separate litters, keep good records, alert me and others when desired genotypes are available, etc.), but within a month she came to me and said that it only takes about half of her time and she wants to do something in addition. After spending just a year and a half in my lab she earned authorship on three papers. Good thing is that not even the most deranged libtard could accuse me of racism. She was blacker than 95% of American blacks (she is a real African, not a hyphenated pretender). Our department had a black graduate student from Africa, and his PI was extremely happy with his performance and attitude. Your description of Negroes fits degenerate American blacks, not the normal ones. I believe that PC BS and freebies made them pathetic degenerates, not their race.
Does not accord with my experience of African graduate students who will often do hare-brained things like pour concentrated hydrochloric acid right above a lab stool, spilling some on it accidentally, not even notice that they spilled it, and left it for blank slatists to sit on.
How to organize a petition to deny the vaccine to Sweden until the time countries that tried to reduce mortality get it first? Norway and Finland have 10 times lower mortality than Sweden. If Sweden did what Finland and Norway did 6000 Swedes would be still alive. Bud Sweden did not do it because it does not care for lives of its citizens. Sweden should not get vaccine until countries that care for the lives of their citizens get it first.
India is quite behind economically but has quite meaningful soft power. So did Japan, even when it was just a backwater country, as it was famous even then for its swords. This also doesn’t distinguish why, for example, Poland creates quite a bit of media while Hungary doesn’t at the same level of GDP/capita.
There is probably a link between soft power production and GDP per capita, but it is doubtful that it is straightforward.
One way you can settle this. State your race.
Is your blood Indian or is it white?
Large amount of Poles are working in West Europe, and remitting income back home, they also have access to the single market.
Russia doesn’t have either of these, and probably doesn’t want them.
The EU is more than development funds for the East, but those (bribes) are quite useful.
Jared Taylor was born in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese. He wrote a book on Japan in the 80s.
Interesting idea… Let’s give unlimited amounts of fiat money, created out thin air, to the poor and we will have a healthy economy… What could possibly go wrong? Why hasn’t anyone thought of it before? Perhaps Maduro could use that tactic to finally take Venezuelans out of their misery.
I don’t know what the economic situation is in Russia (if that’s where you live) but let me inform you that here in the US just before the pandemic we had a half of a century record low unemployment rate (so much for automation killing jobs and the need of a UBI) and in most of Europe the economy was also buoyant, especially in Germany, the UK and some Nordic and EE countries. As a matter of fact, right now the economy has recovered in many parts of the US, such as the one where I live, and we have practical full employment again. I see “help wanted” and “now hiring” signs in most factories, retail stores and even some restaurants. They’re struggling to find workers.
I don’t quite see the purpose of the desperate measures that you keep advocating thread after thread.
Indeed, traveling to Michigan from TN in August, I was surprised to see numerous “help wanted” and “now hiring” signs on restaurants and other establishments. My conclusion was that lugenpresse stories and “stats” on unemployment are just as false as everything else American MSM spread.
Well, there are tons of books written about Sun Tzu and how it relates to the business world.
These Japanese books came out during and after the peak of Japan’s rise. So there was a lot of interest on learning what made Japan so successful.
With China, the west still can’t figure out if China is a communist country or capitalist. Most Americans think China is just a giant sweatshop and have no idea of 5G or Quantum computers.
I think you are just a decade too soon.
The help wanted signs are a feature of legacy Boomer management, most jobs of this type are usually applied online.
These businesses were also competing with government stimulus checks, and with newfangled work from home positions.
Luckily, we need not be stymied by the refusal of many Harris/Biden voters to rationally consider the substantial evidence of outcome-changing vote fraud.
Republicans have the majority in the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, and the US Constitution gives state legislatures the sole authority to choose or determine how to choose presidential electors.
If they have balls, they will certify Trump electors to reflect him winning the majority of legally compliant, timely ballots.
(That excludes ballots that were not received by the close of the polls on election night. It also excludes ballots that were altered after they were received, whether by “poll workers” or by the voters with the selectively granted permission of those workers.)
Trump won and he should be sworn in for his second term on January 20th. He may yet be.
New York State population 2019: 19.45 million
Balkans Population : 32 million
https://www.gisreportsonline.com/media/__sized__/report_images/Map_Balkans_1-crop-c0-5__0-5-1340×828-70.jpg
If they say so, I’m at the guard again!
No one can harm you Serb Republic!
If they call, I’m in the trenches again!
No one can harm you Serb Republic!
Nothing is hard for me!
For you the heart beats!
Whenever you need, call and your Hawks will be there!
You are the land of our dreams!
The land of Serb knights!
For you life is given!
May your name last for eternity!
Defend Republika Srpska!
Who dares say, who dares lie, that Serbia is small ?
She’s not small, She’s not small, but was three times at war
In 1912, in 1912, she drove out the turks
In 1913, In 1913, she withstood the bulgars
In 1914, In 1914, the Jerries struck [“Schwaba” – slang collective term for all Germans]
In 1918, In 1918, the Serbs won
Who dares say, who dares lie, that Serbia is small ?
She’s not small, she’s not small, but is still at war
And will never, and will never, be enslaved again.
I took a slight bit of licence with the translation to better fit the attitude being expressed with “who dares say/lie” rather than the more straightforward “who is saying/lying”. Even back when I had some mild nationalist sympathies, this song made me cringe, reminding me of nothing so much as Freddy Corleone in Part II pathetically protesting that “I can handle things, I’m smart…not like everybody says I’m dumb, I’m SMART!” [I.E. We ain’t small, not like everybody says – we’re BIG. “We wuz knezes and sheeit.”]
He’s had long enough to answer. His conspicuous refusal to do so is noted. The fact that he hasn’t posted anywhere else since the question was put to him doesn’t get him off the hook. Identity is taken very seriously on this site, and one has a responsibility to closely follow all threads in which one’s identity is in dispute.
Hell, even I can’t avoid avoid reading Hindi on the internet these days, and I’m not even interested in anything Indian. Seems like half the youtube searches I run about topics that have zero relevance to India result in repellent Hindi script sprawled all over my screen.
It’s gotten so bad that even encountering Hindoo usernames in the comments ticks me off, and I’m unable to read what they say without their goofy singsong accents resonating in my skull. I propose that Indians be forthwith banned from all English-language internet media.
People like you and DforDoom just don’t get it. (utu, however, may be on to something.) This site is a training ground for ‘democratic centralism.’ Yes, we may debate this or that topic, but once a consensus has been reached, that settles it. If my party needs Thulean Fag to be Indian, then he is Indian, goddammit. That is how we win.
(Btw, DforDoom, did you enjoy the recent rendition of the national anthem in the Eora language by the Wallabies – even the white players – as much as I did? I’ve still got the warm buzz I felt. Nothing spells inclusivity like hearing your national anthem in a tongue you can’t understand and whose existence you weren’t even aware of until five minutes ago.
I suspect we’ll be seeing much more of this, since there are so many Abo languages left to repeat the spectacle with and since it’s now the unwritten law of the land that no major sporting event may commence without first boring spectators to tears with elaborate – but cynical, rather than heartfelt – paeans to indigenous Australia.)
Speaking of Chinese influence, I wonder if western countries would have applied lockdowns had China not previously done so.
And perhaps you should never get your freedom back because you ignorantly and sanctimoniously supported taking ours with no good medical reason. You are a fucking bully.
Can’t argue with that. You open the floodgates to these macacas and every Ranjeet, Sanjeet and Goop-tah is gonna want in.
The Great Hinundation.
Now, listen, don’t go getting all bent out of shape about anything I’ve said here. You’re an okay dude. Just because I ‘hate’ you doesn’t mean I hate you, see.
And besides, if there’s one good thing I can unreservedly say about India is that it offers the most favorable prospects of delivering a mass spanking to the minions of Mahound liable to occur this century; that one such act being sufficient to absolve your breed of a thousand aesthetic sins.
They would have because that is the protocol they use in their pandemic simulations.
Are you not seeing the joke or are you really so serious and humourless?
I have to lol. English could not possibly be your native tongue if you think I’m – me, of all people – “serious and humourless”.
The potential this offers for cost-free virtue-signalling is practically unlimited.
There are four times as many Polonkadonks as there are Magyars. That might have something to do with this.
Question for the ex-USSR members here: Has membership in the Eurasian Economic Union by and large been beneficial for its various members?
When and where exactly is this?
Any native speaker of English will notice that its not my native language, but you were clearly implying that I take Thulean Friends identity too seriously, which means that you didnt detect that I was half-joking with my question making.
Therefore you are humourless!
In this you are completely wrong.
And not just that, I suspect.
What’s the Eoran word for ka-ching?
Also, you occasionally get the feeling that the Persians might be better.
Daniel, wtf bro? This barely coherent remark, which succeeded only in betraying a greater lack of reading comprehension than I initially estimated, somehow merited a LOL? Sheesh, that’s some slap in the face, coming from one of the sharper minds in these parts.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this Altan chap yet. I’ve only recently even bothered reading his posts, since when you see a username beginning with altan… there’s hardly much incentive to continue reading, combined with the fact that when he first came to my attention the war with hapless, friendless Armenians had just commenced, which further dampened my interest. Despite possible appearances to the contrary, it takes much more than a simple miscommunication to incur my ire.
We need the Democrats so that can have a strong economy going into the glorious nonwhite future and teaching critical race theory.
Its mysticism is one of its few strengths. (Its major strength being its role as an ethnic marker, although this isn’t strictly an ecclesiastical feature.) People want mystical. They can get their logical rules from the rest of their culture. Catholicism’s weakness is its pretense of having derived logically airtight rules for everything – which is fine if you control the cultural levers, but the moment it becomes possible to rationally scrutinize it, you’re quickly reduced to a laughing stock.
And you don’t have to stand the entire time. You can sit down when the priest goes behind the altar (whatever that room is called*), which he does quite a lot. The few Greek churches I’m familiar with have installed pews, and I’ve seen some people (not just the elderly) sit through an entire service.
*One of the graver weaknesses is surely that so many people are like me, exposed to church services from the very youngest, and yet as adults still fundamentally clueless about what is taking place – and believe it or not, there was a time when I even took it quite seriously. Also, very few people can understand what the hell is being chanted, besides the obvious phrases like “amen” and “God bless.” Then again, this used to occur regularly in the middle ages in catholic churches, where inadequately trained priests who couldn’t speak Latin would just make up words and the congregants were none the wiser.
Beyond not understanding the liturgy, people are even uncertain about such ritual basics as when to cross yourself during the service (and there is a lot of this). The priest himself performing the sign of the cross is an obvious cue, but otherwise it’s far from clear. I think after an “amen” is an appropriate time (I can’t remember, it’s been a while). Mostly though, people just follow-the-leader, who I think often just crosses himself because inspiration struck him, much the way baptists blurt out hallelujahs without apparent rhyme or reason.
I used to have fun seeing if I could “fake people out” by pretending to start crossing myself and getting onlookers to follow me, but then stop before I completed it (as in just reach my hand to my forehead and then abruptly stop) and see if they went on to complete it. This only worked during regular services, when the number of attendees was smaller. During Christmas and Easter it was too packed, and half the people were just there to socialize, so they’re weren’t paying enough attention to be able to catch them out with a faked cross.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/nanobridge-to-the-stars-and-ai-internet-of-things/
You definitely have a strange way of “having fun”. You’re probably one of those individuals who likes to attend funerals, even for individuals that you’ve never known, because there might be an opportunity to attend a free memorial lunch after the burial.
Szájer was always rumored to be a homosexual. He was actually rumored to have had some pedophile incident, though it was never very specific so I have no idea how true or even what it was. There was a rumor of getting uncovered in Vienna, another rumor about his native Sopron (on the Austrian border), both cities were mentioned in the context of pedophilia and homosexuality, I never knew if these were different versions of the same rumor or about different events. For what it’s worth, I first heard these rumors sometime around the year 2000, certainly before the election in 2002. It was also rumored that it was the reason he has never been a government minister, despite being smart and competent and always loyal to Orbán. “He could be blackmailed” – so the rumors.
Basically everyone knew about these rumors. Also, everyone suspected that at least the homosexuality part was true. Everyone, including Fidesz supporters. Including everyone with any connection to the Fidesz inner circle. Talking head journalists close to Fidesz discussed the issue on some rightist TV channel this week, and they said things like “we’ve all known about this issue with Jóska (diminutive of József, “Joe”) for 30 years…”
But I don’t think many other prominent Fidesz members are homosexuals. Last year there was another sex scandal about an orgy involving a Fidesz mayor and a few other guys close to him, but it also involved a few young female prostitutes, and, according to the video which leaked, the guys were strictly having sex with the girls. Orbán is clearly heterosexual, as are most prominent leaders, some of whom have already had divorces, but then always had a new relationship with a woman. One prominent Fidesz MEP, Tamás Deutsch, has the distinction of being a dumb Jew, but is also very loyal to Orbán, and has four children from two of his three wives, plus another child from an extramarital affair with his then secretary. The potential for scandal there is that he has long been rumored to be a cocaine addict, or at least heavy abuser. His photo taken on an election night (he was barely able to speak) has become a meme with “drugs are bad, mkay” texts, though he could have been merely drunk that day. I’m fairly sure he has used cocaine, I even know a guy who claimed to once have snorted with him.
Some other people in Orbán’s inner circle are probably cocaine abusers, most likely his close advisor Árpád Habony (a video from Ibiza seems to indicate that at least, also persistent rumors; the guy is usually thought to be the mastermind behind Orbán’s media empire), and I’ve heard of a few others which are less persistent and thus may or may not be true. Also several cases of lower level people getting caught over the years. (Their careers usually ended, so the likely rule is simply “don’t get caught.”)
Viktor Vekselberg Loses Swiss Sanctions Lawsuit
Viktor Vekselberg Loses Swiss Sanctions Lawsuit
https://www.finews.com/news/english-news/44077-viktor-vekselberg-julius-baer-us-sanctions
That’s a shining demonstration of the true state of balance of power between Russia and the West.
https://pp.userapi.com/c627930/v627930666/3e94c/lH9FxkzZmvA.jpg
Its wonderful that USA does its very best in stopping of capital outflow from Russia and constantly encourages Russian oligarchs to invest in their own country. American leadership is the best friend for those who support protectionist policies in Russia!
It seems that the common sense logic itself is collapsing or disappearing during this era.
Anatoly, could you please remove comment #195? It got posted before I ended up editing. Many thanks!
That’s an optimistic way of seeing things. There’s a pessimistic way of seeing things; that is as long as Russia uses US $ it is not free or immune from direct American interference in its politics and economy (Nord Stream II comes to mind). And then there is the realistic way of seeing things: Russia is integrated into the global economy and must abide by certain rules that are not decided in Moscow. The news this year are that these rules are probably not decided in Washington either. Americans can’t even decide the election outcome for themselves, the US of A are just a tool. Question is; who makes the rules?
BLOCKQUOTE – Even back when I had some mild nationalist sympathies, this song made me cringe, reminding me of nothing so much as Freddy Corleone in Part II pathetically protesting that [I.E. We ain’t small, not like everybody says – we’re BIG. “We wuz knezes and sheeit.”] – BLOCKQUOTE (done manually because the default UR one is bugged for some reason)
I’ve heard this song a few times myself and felt differently.
After all, how can there be something cringeworthy in it simply reciting facts and expressing pride in them?
In fact, Serbia would indeed be much larger than it is right now if it was not being constantly sabotaged, artificially having fake nations privileged at its expense and relentlessly kept being beaten down by malevolent foreign empires for at least the past 700 years …
And yes, it is a fact that Serbia won in all those wars from 1912-1918 (although not without considerable struggle of course). Of course, forming the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1918 would end up undoing much of these victories in the decades to come, teaching the lesson that Serbs don’t have so much of a problem with winning battles and triumphing with raw military force, but one with political wisdom, diplomacy, national unity, and cohesion.
Although, of course, explaining this to someone that unironically believes in Yugoslav national identity, that Serbia was a stable and “normal” country from 2000-2012, and other notoriously infamous stupidities that you’ve already been debunked on many times by now …
Still, I’m curious, who exactly where your ancestors?
Any Croats in your ancestry by chance?
Russian oligarchs need to band together and sue US government for anti-semitism and discrimination.
All those Vekselbergs, Rotenbergs, Abramoviches… they will have a case – US Treasury is pursuing Jewish people and their money with vigor not seen since 1930’s Germany.
Maybe it just was a humorous way to see things?
One of the geatest ironies of modern politics is that without sanctions Russias economy would be closely integrated with the west and USA and EU could have enormously economic soft power in Russia.
You think I went to church for the sole (or main) reason to do that? Lol. I was a kid, dragged there by my father. Another good point that anon had about the Orthodox church is that the services definitely last too long. What’s a bored but curious kid supposed to do if not pay attention to what’s going on and try to figure out an explanation of how things work there and perhaps have a bit of fun at the same time, especially when the priest, who was a family friend and would visit our home almost weekly, never even tried to explain anything to me?
There was a time there when I was quite devout (around 11-12yo), and some people casually floated the idea of the priesthood for me (lol as if – I was very dutiful about keeping up appearances for the sake of my parents, which gave family friends the completely wrong impression of me), so it’s quite remarkable he never attempted to impart any religious instruction to me. That’s something Catholics do – that everyone does – vastly better than us.
Now, as for attending the funerals of complete strangers in order to score a free meal, I had no idea that was even a thing. Though now that you mention it, I vaguely recall seeing a documentary about it; or it may even have been the plot of a movie, not sure. It’s actually a pretty cool idea, definitely worth doing for the sheer thrill value (and may as well have the meal if it’s there – it’d be rude not to). I have an ex-girlfriend who’d be perfect as an accomplice. She would back me up seamlessly if I was bullshitting someone, and even make some unique contributions of her own. I reckon I could rekindle that old flame on the strength of this idea alone. Thanks!
No matter what anybody thinks, to me Romania is part of the Balkans, and btw why Greece is not? Biggest contributor to the Balkans culture has been historically Greece and its geographically part of the peninsula, so its a Balkan country.
You failed to address the crux of the matter.
If you don’t like Venezuela, we can take any other random country. Morocco, Turkey, Montenegro,… Their governments should stop wasting time and send helicopters to poor neighborhoods every morning to drop bags of freshly printed cash.
As a matter of fact, let’s imagine Russia. Mr Mishustin should issue a 50 million ruble check (I know that you said unlimited but let’s be careful with the initial batch) to every domestic household. Inflation and the value of the ruble may take a little hit but it doesn’t matter, GDP would go brrr…
Anyway, this is what I said from the beginning that I wanted to avoid: debating crackpot monetary policy. Thanks for the discussion though, the idea that the distribution of the stimulus packages has been suboptimal possibly has merit.
https://twitter.com/ArtyomLukin/status/1335593829114793986?s=20
I think the debate over what is “Balkan” and what isn’t is a bit dumb and pointless imo. I also don’t really care whether Romania and/or Greece are considered as “Balkan” or not.
To me what’s more important is that the term “Balkan” is usually used in English language media to cover up anything good or positive about Serbia and Serbs, to pretend as if its some sort of universal regional phenomenon, while when anything bad or negative is about Serbia and Serbs, it is explicitly referred to as being of ethnic Serb origin.
The term “West Balkans” is even more ridiculously loaded because it implies that there is something Western about all the countries in the Balkans that exclude Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. Of course, the purpose of this is to legitimize and justify “Euro-Atlantic integration” of the part of the Balkans that is still not integrated or resisting (mostly Serbs and Serbia).
From what I understand, Balkan is a Turkish word/phrase although of which exact combination, I’m not sure. There’s also the Latin Haemus Mons which could perhaps be a more accurate or appropriate term. Still, anyone that uses “Haemus Mons” is usually some sort of ancient-Illyrian LARPer and it’s an excellent sign of a mentally unhinged and deranged person.
Good luck with your girlfriend and your new fangled way of scoring some free meals, although I can think of many other more pleasant ways to accomplish the same thing! 🙂
In all seriousness, I think that Thulean Friend could be telling the truth about himself. That is, if he meets at least three of the following criteria:
1.)an Indian donated an organ to him
2.)pulled him from a burning building
3.)rescued him from a desert island
4.)pushed him out of the way of a speeding car (perhaps, this is why he hates cars?)
5.)he looks like the Elephant Man and this endears him to his Indian girlfriend
6.)the Indians have developed a chip which they implant into people’s brains
7.)there is a new retrovirus out there that turns you into an Indian
8.)African migrants made a voodoo doll of him, and buried it in a jar of curry
9.)Indians have turned him into a Manchurian candidate to give Harris a promotion.
I was going to try to go for ten, but I can’t do it.
And on the other side, he could honestly say that he has Swedish blood, if he got a bone marrow transplant from a compatible Swede.
Hey, you were supposed to agree with him at making fun of the chinese and blacks.
Get outta here with your truth!!!
Damn. The burn could be felt from across the internet.
That probably could happen if TN hired the African American.
Happy to help:
10)He is a member of some strange Hindu sect, which has brainwashed him.
Even I thought about a week ago that he is a Swede, but why a Swede would speak so personally and emotionally about the founders and leftists of India?
A liberal or progressive Swede would feel a natural affinity towards the Indian left.
Which is?
All those countries have fiat currencies that they create out thin air and helicopter drop to rich people. It’s no different from US or anywhere else. They just don’t have the aircraft carriers to make the rest of the world take their money, but domestically it’s the same process. And it’s the same argument – channeling more free fiat to the bottom of income distribution will generate higher nominal GDP growth compared to channeling free fiat to the top of the income distribution. It may also result in higher inflation but that’s policy preference and you can evaluate tradeoffs between higher GDP growth rate and inflation and decide how much of each will you prefer.
But mechanics are exactly the same.
It would. Ruble would devalue, there would inflation due to that, but nominal GDP in rubles would go up by definition. It would then become a question of comparing inflation rate to nominal GDP growth rate. If nGDP > inflation rate it would worth it, if not, it wouldn’t .
What’s so crackpot about channeling more fiat currency to the bottom of income distribution? What is crackpot is you imagining money not being fiat, as if we were under gold standard or something. It’s not 1920’s anymore. Money is fiat and we will be creating $quadrillions of it keep the the global economy limping along. This not debatable, this is an objective reality that you can observe by rising global debt levels. It is an irreversible process. If you don’t see it, you are a crackpot.
All I’m saying is that if we will be creating $quadrillions of dollars in the near future anyway, it will be more economically efficient to direct a significant portion of it to the bottom of the income distribution rather than the top as we usually do.
How is that irrational?
Only an utterly delusional idiot would claim that there arent smart Africans. Its just that their share/proportion of population is much smaller in comparison to Europeans and Asians.
African migrants to USA are normally high achieving folks, but no wonder, its just statistics, if you collect just the cream of the milk you will get just cream, duh!
Not that I care at all about where Thulean Friend is from, but for the Easterners here who may not be so familiar with Western culture, and the Wesrern right wingers here who aren’t familiar with high brow Leftist culture;
Its not uncommon for some people in the West to develop an enthusiasm for a foreign, exotic culture, and become experts on it and even identify with it. The most common country to do this with is Japan, where there is even a term for this kind of thing.
But I’ve seen it down with some truly random countries, like Hungary. Russia used to be another popular subject. It used to be common with the English to do this with regard to Arabia, at one point. T.E Lawrence is the obvious example.
Robert Byron traveled to Persia and wrote a book on the architecture of that region. Rebecca West wrote a book on the Balkans, and particularly Serbia, that is considered a classic.
In the West, this kind of thing boosts your intellectual credentials- developing an eccentric enthusiasm for some foreign culture is cool and shows a broad mind.
It also acts as a surrogate for the traditional culture the West rid itself of. People yearn for what they have lost, and they can only allow themselves to get it by taking a supposedly intellectual interest in some exotic culture. At home, one must be impeccably rational.
India is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating places on earth, and has fascinated countless Westerners. There is nothing unusual about developing an interest in it, among Westerners. Countless people have written books on India.
And of TF had an Indian girlfriend, or Indians married into his family, there is even less of a mystery.
Progressive Swede married to an Indian woman?
You and utu have provided excellent observations. I suspect that he is a progressive Swede, married to an Indian woman.
Is economic development a precondition for soft power, or are both expressions of an underlying dynamism?
As you note, China is not actually a wealthy country. Its just a huge country, and its rising from a very low base. China also benefits from a unique moment in history – all advanced economies offshored their manufacturing to China, creating a unique wealth creating situation that doesn’t necessarily speak to an underlying capacity for dynamic creativity.
In other words, the kind of creative dynamism that leads to both wealth and soft power, is not in evidence in China. There is a desperate effort on Unz to persuade us that China is a leading technology creator, but if this were true, it would be undeniable. No persuading would be required. There is some evidence it is beginning to move in that direction, as both you and TF note that China has become a top developer of some electronic music equipment etc. But this feels, as of now, more niche, and less characteristic.
I’m not saying the Chinese don’t have potential. As you know, I’m a huge admirer of ancient Chinese culture. But the heavy hand of the CCP may be preventing that potential from breaking through. It may be, that China simply can’t make the leap to dynamic creativity under the repressive CCP. China may have gone aa far as it can under the CCP.
Probably, the most likely, but I didn’t want to invoke brainwashing twice.
I thought I explained this with the Freddy Corleone reference. It’s not the facts themselves I take issue with, nor even the idea of taking some basic pride in them. It’s the idea of using them to pretend to be much greater or more important than you are. When you’re a primitive peasant backwater culture like Serbia, the very idea of grandiose self-importance is intrinsically pathetic.
I’ll grant that the extent of Serbian primitiveness may not have been quite evident to a Serbian patriot in 1918 – the kind of Serbian patriot who penned the song in question, let’s say – so I’ll make an allowance for patriots back in those days who felt this way. But the fact that this song was passed down to me, some three generations later, strongly suggests to me that Serbian patriotic attitudes changed very little in the intervening seventy years – when, by rights, they should have changed a great deal. And this was far from the only such song I heard growing up; songs like it were part of the air I breathed, though I’ve forgotten most of them. (One I remember – Ovo Je Srbija – not an old song, dating perhaps to the early 80s, is hauntingly beautiful and was one of my dad’s favorites. He’d get near teary-eyed listening to it.)
Yes, and singlehandedly too, in Serbian nationalist mythology. I grew up having virtually no idea of the role played by other, typically more important, contributors to those (and earlier) war efforts – efforts without which pipsqueak Serbia would have found herself stomped. That’s pretty amazing, when you think about it.
Oh FFS, I wrote a big long effort post for you on this, and then apparently deleted the fucking thing attempting to insert a “MORE” tag.
No way am I rewriting all that again. Briefly: no Croat; some Greek and Vlach on mother’s side, all from Macedonia and Greece, and some Vlach on father’s side too, from Macedonia. Father’s side grandparents, great-grandparents (not sure) relocated to Macedonia long ago. Still have (had) family in Nis and Pristina, and in Greece from mother’s side. Grew up in nationalistic Serbian home.
That is why you hire based on merit and ability.
We cracked the code – Thulean Friend is Yuri Bezmenov! Of course he would counter that Bezmenov has been dead for a while, but that’s exactly what he would want you to think! He is the undead Yuri Bezmenov.
🙂
https://kohlchan.net/.media/e5f613bfc75619d853e15f0d9e190e9b2f7a4977e95421860d424832d58efd1a.png
https://kohlchan.net/.media/8d25e09d4e8be09e035b848c9b7a0fe938d8b35c9b0c1fd0e37a772780d78414.jpg
I was going to say “common law wife”, but I think “in an open relationship with an Indian girlfriend, who enjoys cucking him” would be more appropriate. That is, if he is a Swede.
Though, I, for one, think that his parents are still trying to find him a bride from the right jati.
Well, the current international language is English. USA and Europe literally dominates international dialogue and information spread. Any country or culture can only gain a foothold if allowed. Indians have free reign in the USA right now. They have permission from the Jewish media and Hollywood.
So you will see a lot of the tv shows n movies having Indian actors and promoting indian culture. Even supposed white supremacist Steve Bannon is promoting Indians.and culture. That should tell you everything. I hope the chinese understands this fact.
Dmitry’s point about economic level. I agree. I have been saying the same exact thing. But I include hardpower and status into the requirements too.
Hardpower, and money.
Soft power and status would come naturally when those two are at a certain level. Think about the american military combined with Hollywood. What do you get? Answer is simple right?
Of course they’re a part of the Balkans, 100%. Not only geographically, but racially and culturally too. Balkans nations look the same, behave the same, mostly worship the same. If they were saner, there’d be a healthy movement towards a more unified Balkans identity. Sadly, sanity is in short supply there. In many ways, they are only geographically European. If they were an island, like Britain, say, I believe far fewer people would bother to attach the label “European” to them. It’s like the Caucasus. It’s quite a stretch, but if you were up to it, you could attempt to include them as European; but no one really bothers – not even lefties – because they’re so culturally repellent.
Thulean Friend
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/visegrad-med-now-safer-than-core-europe/#comment-3699954
TF behaves the way he does, simply because he likes the attention everyone gives him.
Maybe TF is a shared account between a genuine Sweede and his Indian wife.
All of the cringey Hindoo posts are from his wife?
And to be fair, I don’t think he uses the word ‘whit(e)oid’, if you search his comment archive for this term it comes back with no results.
The more China manages to compete in higher technology the more Westerners feel the need to claim that China can only steal technology and that they don’t have any ability to invent anything by themselves. Your posts exemplify this behavior.
He could be similar to this guy?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Koenraad_Elst_at_Varanasi.jpg/1280px-Koenraad_Elst_at_Varanasi.jpg
Well my own opinion on TF is that he is a very light skinned Indian from a high Brahman caste.
And since Indians were the original Aryans this makes him basically a Swede.
From a recent Twitter exchange:
Gay flag emblazoned toilet paper – an obvious hate crime or an “Islam is right about women” conundrum?
I remember this comment. I assume he was fibbing, in order to tweak us all, but there are other possibilities:
1.)Dyes his hair
2.)has light brown hair, being a mischling and other Indians call him “blondie” in celebration of it.
3.)notice the punctuation between “yes I agree” and “I still have a hard-wired preference for people who look like me.”
Alright, I have worked it out of my system. I promise I will make no more posts about crypto-Indians – at least on this thread. Though, since I still have this box to fill:
It is perhaps a bit alarming that Dmitry, being keen-eyed, and of sharp memory, found that past damning comment that Polish Perspective made, revealing his true nature. (Though, I think even with the personality differences, they do not have the same textual fingerprint – I assume he was a different Indian.) Dmitry’s idea that they are the same person strikes me as eccentric. In fact, I should say, the idea that nobody ever leaves this blog, but is just re-incarnated as a new personality, is a very charming notion, or, at least, it would be, if only it weren’t based on Indian mythology.
Dmitry, it seems, thought he could throw off the scent by tossing one of his own off the sled! Or what would be the Indian equivalent? The elephant?
https://i.ibb.co/bK0S3kq/ade80bb8f78b2502db144f2f1db06e41-imagepng.png
https://i.ibb.co/M9NDStp/5e82f707bd4a960c776e78b631ad651b-imagepng.png
Dmitry is also Indian?
What do you think Blinky Bill is?
Are you suggesting we dwell not in Anatoly Karlin’s Sublime Oblivion but rather in his own private Saṃsāra.
https://akarlin.com/2010/01/sublime-oblivion/
Of course it is unjust–but policymakers actually have no choice.
If they gave all the free money to the poor, then the poor would spend it and the velocity of money would explode.
Then we would have off the charts inflation that would be impossible to hide.
(I think they are all stinking kleptocrats who deserve the guillotine–don’t get me wrong–but giving the money to the poor would blow up the economy very quickly–and no public policy type would intentionally go there unless their New Zealand dacha had already been secured.)
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTanSMNf4UZc996Ue2NMB0ixA6IbZBHJNlsXg&usqp.jpg
https://bemarsupial.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/koala-india.jpg
Deep down inside, we all have a little Indian inside of us, don’t we?
Utu is is probably right, no leftist Swede would comment on a site like this. They have a strong and well internalised world view where such things as race or religious or ethnic biases dont exist. For them our discussions here would just sound plainly mad. But there are always exceptions, though TH would be quite extreme one with his anti-muslim biases.
Last summer I participated a Buddhist retreat in one of the Nordic countries, and there I befriended with a one Swedish psychologist, he was well travelled, learned and affluent, but oddly for him there wasnt any problem if all Swedes would be slowly replaced by immigrants. Such concepts as ethnic continuity were totally alien for him. Of course he could understand that there are people who think strongly about such matters, but for him such thinking arised from fear and poverty etc.
That’s the whole point though – we want the velocity of money to explode. If velocity of money increases we will not need to create as much debt to drive GDP growth which in turn will lower our debt to GDP ratios. So will inflation by the way.
And basic incomes can be easily throttled and manipulated via interest rates just like we regulate money supply from commercial banks currently.
So the odds of hyperinflation are remote. And moderate inflation will grow nominal GDP so we want that anyway to make debt loads more reasonable.
The way we do macroeconomic policy today is just dumb. In US alone we created $80 trillion of free money that is utilized highly inefficiently and we need dozens of $trillions more in the future just to keep afloat and we wouldnt need that if we got money velocity going again.
Lowering inflationary expectations (once serious inflation kicks in) is a treacherous game, and many governments in history have collapsed because they couldn’t handle it.
Once the public believes that inflation is out of control, it gets out of control and stays out of control.
Economic models and tinkering with interest rates and even fiscal policy become of academic interest at that point.
I got the impression that your heritage is from the Balkans? Do you despise your own heritage? Can I ask why? Because you complain lot about the Balkans, but with my limited English I havent yet gotten anything substantial. Just that church was boring and theres lots of chauvinistic nationalism. But such is quite common among the cultures of Eurasia. I mean national fantasies and rivalries, old religious traditions that dont always make outwardly sense and so on.
I agree with you that they should unite, at least the Christian parts + Bosnia.
I don’t want to break my promise, so I won’t use the word that is sometimes treated as a synonym with “Native American”, or even its first letter, but I will say this: oddly enough, people with Chinese blood seem to dominate my whitelist of confirmed non-______s. It seems as though _____s, due to their natural antipathy for real Asians, have trouble pretending to be them.
But perhaps, it was a mistake to let them onto this. They may update their tactics, and destroy the last refuge, leaving me with the African commenters that I may have alienated, like Bliss and Spear_chucker, should they return.
After all, I may admire Enoch Powell’s scholarship and abilities, but where was he posted? And Aaron_B puts on a pretty good show about being a Jew, but where exactly was his favorite “English” author Kipling born?
Yes because he uses “wh*toids”
How would you generate inflation? Average American can barely afford $1,000 emergency car repair. Majority of people don’t have even meanful retirement savings they can raid.
In order for the can of beans to cost $1,000, somebody has to pay $1,000 for it. Basic supply and demand. Where will that $1,000 come from? American savings? Nope, they don’t have any. (Well, some do, but they would have to buy millions of cans of beans per “saver” to deplete their savings – not going to happen).
Wages? Do you seriously see Walmart raising their cashiers pay to $1,000/hr? It’s just not going to happen.
People believed there would be hyperinflation after 2008. People believed there would be hyperinflation in Japan. People believe there will be hyperinflation now after $trillions spent in stimulus. People are clueless.
Meanwhile, before the pandemic, US posted pathetic 2.3% real GDP growth rate in 2019 while running almost 5% Fed budget defict and record levels of corporate debt. AND moron banks managed to get themselves into a repo crisis.
Pandemic helped mask all that but US economy was falling apart well before that. Meanwhile, people masturbate over imaginary inflation. Just like Japanese government idiots who hike consumption taxes and then wonder why their economy plunges into recession again.
I guess we will need to print another $100-200 trillion in debt before economists activate their brain cells and see what is happening in the real world.
https://youtu.be/XfR9iY5y94s?t=121
The pre-Revolutionary Greek agitator, Rigas Feraios had an idea of a culturally Greek Balkan federation built on Enlightenment values in the late 1700s. Unfortunately, he was betrayed, arrested by the Austrians and executed by the Ottomans.
Kind of weird to exclude the Balkans from Europe given Greece is part of the Balkans.
I agree that under current policies inflation is impossible because “average folks” don’t have the money to spend.
All I am saying is that if they suddenly had the money–they would spend it and spend it quickly–which would drive inflationary expectations.
Academic economists could (correctly) point out that such expectations are totally irrational–but people act on irrational beliefs–in fact all hyper-inflation scenarios are people acting on irrational beliefs.
Hmmm, anyone could be an Indian here, makes you wonder…
Indians are not the original Aryans, but some northern Indians, like Punjabis and Dardic peoples are partially descended from them.
The Twitter comment is proving beyond any doubt that our initial fears of Artificial Intelligence were badly misplaced–it appears our greatest enemy will turn out to be Artificial Stupidity.
(Is that worse or better?)
Hmm, if so, why was the West quite willing to recognize the technological achievements of the Japanese. European states were also quite competitive and hostile towards each other, but England was quite prepared to recognize the achievements of Germany and France, and vice versa.
The USA was also very willing to recognize the scientific breakthroughs of the Soviet Union, and was so threatened by them that it spurred massive educational reforms and government efforts to catch up at the highest level. There is no comparable sense of technological threat from China- instead, there is a sense that Chkna steals Westerm technology.
So, there isn’t a history of political competition leading to denying the technological achievements of hostile competitors. Rather, it hass frequently spurred internal reform. Secondly, the scientific community is generally intellectually more curious and broad minded than the average person, and leans left. They tend not to care about politics.
I submit that dynamic creativity cannot be achieved under a repressive regime like the CCP, which doesn’t permit the needed level of anarchism and free thought.
Under the CCP, China will become more powerful and wealthy, but will hit a wall. Which may be ok. Maybe the CCP was needed for a time to achieve that.
But I don’t expect China to become interesting until it becomes less repressive.
Yul Brynner and now Men at Work, what could you mean by this?
https://youtu.be/82akDxNihhU
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Three_different_nationalities_on_Kitaiskaia_Street.JPG
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-09-24/harbiners-return-from-aussie-exile/1440732
Did you know that there was one Daurian or Manchurian noble family in the Russian empire? Gantimurov they were called.
https://scfh.ru/files/medialibrary/c53/c539a4868041b385b30d0346b52a8510.jpg
https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BC%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8B
No answer yet. Hmm puzzling, maybe I blew his cover and he will not post anymore, at least not under the name Thulean Friend?
Any genuinely Swedish guy could easily answer to my questions.
TH dont leave us, I value your contribution to our commentariat! Sorry if Ive been obnoxious towards you!
Not my “heritage” (if that’s taken to mean “ancestry”), but the cultural practices, the beliefs, the ‘ways of being,’ the customs, the common attitudes, and other things of that nature, I generally find it idiotic and stultifying; I grew tired of it a long time (I burned out during the Yugoslav wars) and have no patience for it today. Part of it, I guess, is also a reaction to the ways I was raised, to the things I taught were of importance but which I came to have a contemptuous disregard for.
Yet despite all that, in the diaspora, where I was born and raised, people of these ethnic backgrounds are my preferred company, especially when they’re as acculturated to western ways as I am. Just having the identity itself, without any other accoutrements, is enough for me. I also care very little about goings on in the balkans themselves, unlike Totally Anonymous, who appears to live and breath it.
Also, if I’m willing to be self-critical, it’s a mistake to interpret it as a sign of self-loathing. There’s a certain power in it. You develop the ability to see yourself more clearly, to understand the criticisms of others, to lose the instinct to become agitated when others criticize you. It’s a trick I indirectly learnt off the Anglos – though I’d never take it as far as those cucked out fools have.
Yes I knew of Wassily Kandinsky’s family history, but not in detail. Thank you for sharing the link.
Another member of the family!
https://youtu.be/1XdT17y2R1A
I knw about the Berbers. There are even people who claim connections between Berber and Celtic languages. I did not know about the Georgians or the Southern Italians. The British stone circles are an odd number, 9, 11 or 13 being the most common with a larger isolated stone, called the Heel Stone to the North West. *Most isolated Menhirs/Maenhirs are Heel Staones which have lost their circles. Nearby will be a “hill fort”, probably used for sky burials like modern Farsees and, as you show, a tumulus; we use the word Barrow; to act as the final grave. The passage into the barrow is aligned with the sun at Midsummer. No surviving British Barrow is as magnificent as the one you show, although the Barrow at Newgrange in Ireland certainly is.
Let me point out that Biden’s stupidity is not artificial, but 100% natural – Alzheimer’s disease.
Reminds me of that English historian who popularised the stories about China inventing everything and was in a menage à trois with his English wife and Chinese student
Women & men trad live seperately.
Brothers one house, wives another.
Less nagging
People didn’t adopt nuclear families due to necessity
but from white supremacy||
p. 119
p. 111
Should have made it more clear that I was being sarcastic.
Some Indians who are as dark skinned as Mexicans see themselves as white people because relative to their darker kin, they are light skinned.
Karlin’s forum is a small cafe, with only a couple dozen of regular customers. I’m surprised how little people seem to remember of each other.
I remember when Thulean Friend said he was 20 years old. Also I can remember that he was originally supporting nationalism, before he became interested in ecology.
He was called Polish Perspective a couple of years ago. He already said nationalists in Sweden are like communitarian leftists of other countries. https://www.unz.com/akarlin/generation-zyklon-in-sweden/#comment-2345758 Aaronb similarly switched his views compared to what they were a few years ago.
A high proportion of teenage boys are interested in nationalism and patriotism (I remember this myself when I was in youth). A more unusual thing is to meet people with those views in their 20s. Once you are thrown onto real life, and to start to go to work in a normal job – these projections of your personal identity onto historically arbitrary segment of planet earth, and hundreds of millions of people you will never meet, might start to seem like teenage fantasy or form of procrastination.
In terms of being an ecologist. This is attracting crazy people, as a messianic religion, which is unfortunate, as the general viewpoint that we need to reduce the release of toxic chemicals that will give us cancer should be common opinion.
There are segments of China’s population, which will develop connoisseurship about aspects of culture. For example, classical music is popular in China, and by learning piano a proportion of the next generation will become connoisseurs about classical music.
For example, China is the now the second largest market for sales of pianos. (By comparison, in Russia piano sales are in very bad decline, despite that in Russia there is inherited one of the world’s most important traditions of piano pedagogy).
A strange thing is that the proportion of acoustic piano sales is higher in China, than the world average. Buying even the lowest entry range of Yamaha acoustic pianos, is expensive relative to China’s incomes. So this is counter-intuitive.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/China-s-piano-market-hits-the-right-note-for-Yamaha
One problem with the Chinese is that they do not seem to have English language websites for their arms industry, like totally zero? Like when you try to search for Norinco or the Chinese corporate website for the JF-17, or the VT-4, by typing JF-17 or VT-4, it turns up zero? Like you do not get a website where you get things like presentations and brochures about their products, unlike Western arms manufacturers? But then when I tried to google for the English language corporate website for the SU-30 by typing Su-30 or MiG-29 I cannot find anything either. I mean if someone has to know Russian or Chinese before they can find those websites, or detailed information about their products, that is clearly a large marketing oversight.
Interesting.
China will be an interesting test case of whether a repressive society, with things like social credit and surveillance, can nurture creativity.
Intuitively, one would say no. Historically, the record says no.
But, it may be that China needed a period of social repression to get back on track after the ravages of the cultural revolution. The Chinese people, as I have argued elsewhere, are more chaotic, anarchich, individualistic, non-cooperative, unruly, and hard to rule than Westerners, which is precisely why China needs a very strong, authoritarian government on occasion to get the people in line, whereas more cooperative Westerners can be trusted with more freedom, and thus end up being more creative.
However, there are periods where China gets the balance between anarchy and authoritarian rule right, like during the highly creative and glorious Tang dynasty, when anarchic, free spirited Taoism nicely balanced out the rigid rules of Confucius.
So the repressive CCP may just be a transitional phase, a necessary evil to be discarded later. Chinese creativity may yet get a chance to make interesting and impressive contributions to world culture.
However, I don’t think it will be the kind of Promethean creativity that has characterized the West. As much as China seems to have broken with its past and modeled itself on Enlightenment ideals, it seems not to have absorbed the Promethean spirit, and instead borrowed legalistic, bureaucratic elements of Western culture that mirror elements in its own history.
Cultures tend to repeat themselves, with a twist. I think China will have a New Tang Dynasty, with a strong anarchic, naturalistic, Taoist flavor, in a modern technological setting. China will humanize technology and show how it can integrate with nature, rather than dominate it, as the West has conceived of technology.
This will be a new theme in world culture, a departure from the Western theme of technology dominating nature and being in a fight with nature. The next step in the evolution of workd culture, which, as so often, will actually be a step back from the excesses of the domination of nature paradigm, which has led to the destruction of sl much beauty.
I think too this will be a world trend. Already, apparently, cities in Europe are restricting technology for humanistic reasons, like beauty and livability, as TF points put, whereas a few decades ago the idea that we should control technology, rather than following wherever it may lead, would have been unthinkable.
However, for the time being, China is still boring, and it will take decades till it fulfills its promise, which is a recreation of the beautiful things of its past in modern setting, like all cultures.
From a perspective of the wealthy people, there’s a balance here between a desire to avoid too unfriendly relations with the West (which might result in direct sanctions on yourself ), and also a desire to avoid Russia having too friendly relations with the West (which results in intergovernmental co-operation).
Part of reason that wealthy people choose a country for moving their money to – is that this destination country for moving money to, doesn’t have overly close relationship to the home country from which the money originates.
If the country you move your money to, is an ally of your home country, then there is the danger that they will sign agreements on things like taxation, sharing of mutual information, financial transparency and surveillance, as well as (in the final worst case scenario) mutually agreed extradition treaties.
So, from the oligarch perspective – moving your money to an allied country of Russia (which could have agreements on sharing of mutual information about financial transactions, taxation, extradition), could defeat the insurance benefit of moving your money to another country.
Some of the reason to move money, is to “hedge bets” against possible expropriation and to avoid too much transparency and knowledge about this money – as well as the simple desire to “diversify” (which latter also benefits from putting money into diverse economies which are somewhat decoupled from each other).
I think Vekselberg is clever at maintaining a publicity distance from the source of his wealth, that is in Sverdlovsk region in Russia.
Sverdlovsk is the source foundation of his wealth. He owns many different things, from airport, to the construction companies, which co-incidentally build the region’s overproduction of churches. He owns a large part of core industries like Kamensk-Uralsky’s metallurgy.
But he seems to be a quieter, more distant owner, that benefits from some degree of “Mount Olympus effect”. This might be where the owner of the business tries to be less visible, more distant, and reduces their media footprint. Therefore, local people won’t blame you for everything.
On the other hand, Altushkin and Kozitsyn, are the more unpopular oligarchs in the media, because they seem more local, and residents can directly blame them for a day of bad pollution.
There is regular media coverage talking about Altushkin’s house in London, and his children living in UK, and their British citizenship – but I didn’t yet read about Vekselberg’s house in London, or whether his children are also British citizens.
“Mount Olympus effect” also seems to be something parallel with politicians. More locally accessible seeming to be are politicians, the more peoples’ blame for problems goes to them when something is wrong.
Wait a minute. Is Thorfinneson and Thulean Friend the same guy?
Both claim to be white but are obsessed with India.
There’s an amusing ad campaign being run now to try to draw tourists to Puerto Rico. Has the servitors wearing masks, and it highlights passport-free travel – as though that is a good thing to have with Puerto Rico.
It was a good thing to have with Canada – at one point.
I honestly thought Dmitry was jewish. If he is Indian, it also explains it.
If you really want to learn about chinese weapon systems. Visit credible defences sub reddit. It is american centric, alot of pile on hate for china like every other sub reddit, but it also has a few chinese arms experts posting about every major chinese weapons n ships. Most of the time with photos and alot of details.
Ignore the retarded posters. Focus on the few true experts.
The original video (can’t seem to find it anymore) of that song I watched actually showed you how the size of Serbia grew slowly but gradually, and how it indeed became larger and larger, both in territorial size and population through successful military victories in wars.
That is, Principality of Serbia 1817, 1833. Kingdom of Serbia 1878, 1912, 1913. Kingdom of Serbia 1918 and then Kingdom of Yugoslavia 1918.
Perhaps maybe I could post images of these respective territorial sizes, but if you know any history and bothered to read at least a little, I’m sure you’ll understand what I mean and roughly what sort of map changes I’m talking.
Still, it’s clear that Serbia and Serbs absolutely can be larger and more important then they really are, but internal flaws in the character of Serbs aside, the reason this isn’t the case is because they’re being constantly artificially and relentlessly pushed down by large and powerful foreign empires.
That’s an arrogant and condescending modernist-Liberal attitude to have. The assumption that there is something “primitive” or “backward” about “peasant culture” is very obnoxious and factually problematic.
It actually looks very good and even better with each passing day compared to how well this “advanced” and “progressive” Western Liberal-Multicultural Zionist empire and system is literally in a spiral of downward decay with all its pathologies, desperately trying to maintain its power and relevance through all sorts of malevolent and dirty tricks.
Why should they have changed a great deal though?
Traditions aren’t really traditions at all if they can be easily changed.
The fact that they didn’t is actually a very good thing because it suggests that despite being the fodder for forming a demented anti-Serb Yugoslav project, Serbs managed to survive yet another round or two of denationalization, de-ethnicization and deracination efforts in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Communist SFR Yugoslavia. In fact, given all the disasters and catastrophes Serbs and Serbia have undergone in the 20th century, it’s actually a miracle that they even exist at all today, which may not have been the case if things had gone a little bit differently in WW1, WW2 or even the 1990’s.
Seems like I have more in common with your dad than you …
You could have just read a bit of history if you were truly interested, you know. Although I do understand that those were pre-internet days.
More importantly though, the thing about “pipsqueak Serbia” is that despite having a bunch of “reliable” Western allies, it did end up getting “stomped” but still somehow came out on top despite that in military terms, although not political ones (e.g. WW1 and Thessaloniki/Solun Front especially).
That’s why you should be a bit careful with, and maybe even save longer Unz Review comments, or be prepared to improvise fast and creatively when you edit your comment in the 5 minute time limit.
This tells us 2 interesting things.
First, some of your ancestors were possibly Greek Phanariotes, who are infamous among non-Greeks of the Balkans for their Jewy behavior in the times of the Ottoman Empire, and that some of your other ancestors or relatives in Macedonia (if you have any in North Macedonia currently) are maybe some sort of Monkeydonians LARPing as a real nation.
Much more importantly, this betrays just how much of a Former Serb you really are. An interesting phenomenon, although also truly despicable and disgusting. You’re not actually very different from Milo Djukanovic (he literally changed from being a Serb to becoming a “non-Serb Montenegrin” in the middle of his political career), all the so-called “non-Serb Montenegrins”, Bosnian Muslims and Croats who all hysterically and pathologically hate Serbs because, even though they’ll never consciously admit it, they are all too well aware of the fact that their ancestors were all Serbs, that they are pathetic traitors, fake trash and worthless scum (although some of them were coerced into being non-Serbs to be fair). Some of them have managed to come around to acknowledging and embracing their true ancestry and heritage, but most are still far from that.
Of course, I’m sure that if Serbs and Serbia were more successful, more prosperous and had fared differently in the 1990’s (especially by using the missed window of opportunity to decisively win the war in Bosnia in the 2nd half of 1993), then you would likely feel very differently. Your complex of being a Former Serb would not exist if Serbia and Serbs were more successful, prosperous and well-off.
You’d be better off to either go all the way to disconnect yourself from any ties with your roots and assimilate into whatever you fancy, or just return to your roots and repent from you pathetic “Однарођивање”.
I mean when you go to the website of Boeing, BAE, or Dassault you see well-designed presentations about what they are selling, whereas the Chinese and Russian manufacturers do not even have an English-language website for their products that you can easily find. That is a large problem with regards to the way they communicate their products with their potential customers or even just casual visitors. Or maybe they think that since their deals are government-t0-government, having a good-looking website for the foreign public to see is not an important project? For example when you go to see Irkut’s English website, you see very well-designed presentations about the features of their products, as well as their key selling points, similar to what you will see in Boeing’s and Airbus’ websites.
Teenage boy “nationalism and patriotism” is cheesy and a sensible man will quickly grow out of it. However, once a man starts to go to work, they can easily be lost in the ultimate nihilism of a corporate job where one is used and then discarded at any time driven by shareholder demands expected of management. Similarly, what is the point of many other jobs. However, when raising a family, patriotism matters a lot because you have to impart an identity on your kingdom. And there is nothing really arbitrary about ethnicity. It is deep-seated and in most cases ancient. In fact, studies of kin selection and in-group bias suggest it is also based in nature. Being able to relate to millions of people you have never meet should not seen as somehow tiresome but amazing that a thread, sometimes obvious but sometimes tenuous, runs through such a large group of seemingly unconnected people.
Balkan Slavs should be grateful to the Greek Phanariotes because many of them essentially funded the early part of the Greek Revolution of 1821. If this did not happen it would have taken a lot longer for the Balkan Slavs to be liberated from the backward and pathetic Ottomans of the 19th century.
AK’s opinions on a lot of topics must be understood in the context of him being mostly Russian. I think he has valuable things to say on some issues but I discount a lot of what he opines on in his neighbourhood.
I was reading the archive lately from 2014. The initial posts on Ukraine were just deranged and obviously driven by emotional fervor. To his credit, he later revised his views and came to a more sensible conclusion. But that took a long while and it doesn’t excuse the initial nonsense he pushed early on.
I view his comments on China possibly taking in a large amount of Central Asians in similar veins: more wishful thinking – he wishes for China to offload Russia – than grounded in a hard-nosed reading of China’s internal dynamics.
Once you accept this defect of his, you can move past it and still read some of his takes on other topics which can be worthwhile.
You’re correct that Russia’s oil & gas rents are much more worth than EU gibs. I’ve remarked that Russia’s poverty cannot be explained away by concepts like ‘resource curse’. Australia is highly dependent on commodities.
Russians may be less competent than Anglos. But even if you accept that, they are definitely punching way below where they could. Russia should be doing far better than barely above Mexico, which is what they are doing now. Clearly this is wounding the pride of Russian nationalists, that should be self-explanatory.
That said, AK’s argument is actually better than he realises. It’s too bad he is too incompetent to make it. Namely: the big benefit of the EU isn’t the gibs. It’s trade. You see, the EU’s main strength isn’t just a free-trade area. It’s a common single market.
The difference between a free trade and single market may not be obvious but this article does a good job explaining it. If Russia had been part of the single market, I think Russia and Poland would be a lot closer. Russia would still likely be poorer, though, due to lower human capital. Gibs are nowhere near as impactful as Russia’s oil and gas rents, as you rightly point out. But trade is the great equaliser and the single market is the supercharger of this.
Which is why the Cholas should have finished the job more thoroughly. Both of you start too late in history. If the Cholas would have succeeded in a deep saffronisation of South-East Asia, even centuries of subsequent moslem rule wouldn’t have changed that (just as moslem rule over Spain didn’t).
Even though I’m diaspora like you, don’t exaggerate the extent to which I care.
For instance, I don’t care about “black chronicles” news like who committed what violent crime where, or tabloid news about how e.g. in Novi Sad some guys got drunk and brutally beat each other up over gambling money several weeks ago, etc.
I care about the important stuff which really matters. The geopolitics of the Balkans and the wellbeing of ethnic Serbs. All of that is unfortunately bound to deteriorate very rapidly when what looks like a Joe Biden presidency comes to power. Especially the wellbeing and existence of Republika Srpska and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina as I’ve highlighted earlier in this thread (also likely efforts to reinstate Milo Djukanovic and the DPS in Montenegro, more pressure over Kosovo, etc).
Even if another round of catastrophes and disasters are going to hit Serbs in the next few years and decades to come (after all, Serbs just barely survived ethnocide/cultural genocide in Montenegro in 2020, this year), I still think and feel it’s worth it to hold and defend my heritage, ancestry and ethnicity no matter what. It’s clearly worth quite a lot if it’s something that’s so viciously attacked, demonized, and targeted for destruction across the centuries, particularly the last one, and the struggle is still ongoing. There’s also the fact that West European and Anglo-American countries in general have very bleak future prospects for their founding populations making it a bizarre choice to want to be in that category, especially considering my origins.
Then again, as Dragos Kalajic has said (Not sure if you can read and understand Cyrillic),
“Ако хоћете да будете истински Срби – морате знати да то веома скупо кошта а ништа не доноси, изузев мука, патњи и страдања. Ако за то нисте способни – боље је да се повучете са овог најопаснијег места у Евроазији и да одете у бели свет, да не сметате осталима својим гласним страховањима и жалопојкама. Морате знати да ће рајински менталитет, ванредно способан да се увек и свуда докопа власти и одржи на њој, свако ваше сврставање на страну свог народа награђивати поругама, срамоћењем и прогонима. Ваш избор мора бити слободан од сваке бриге за исход. Једнако морате бити слободни од жудње за победом, као и од страха спрам пораза. Ваша одлука мора бити чиста и неусловљива. Само тако ћете бити достојни српске улоге и традиције.”
Clearly being a Serb is not for everyone and that’s fine if that’s the case for you. To a degree, even I’m also a diaspora LARPer as well.
This is not how it would have played out. True, for smaller submissive country such as Poland, trade is important. Poland trade to GDP ratio is 55%, Russia – 20-30%, US – 20-30%, China – 30-40% , for comparison.
If Russia joined common market, EU regulations would destroy Russian aerospace industry (can’t have Sukhoi, Irkut etc compete with Airbus), destroy Russian nuclear industry (can’t have Rosatom compete with Europeans), destroy Russian space industry (Roscosmos is superior to ESA with 14 successful launches this year vs 4 for Europe), destroy Russian heavy industry (environment), destroy Russian military industry (not compatible with NATO standards), destroy Russian agriculture (too competitive again).
EU would gut Russia like a fish. And sure, Russians would get to make electric buses for Germany or whatever. And then Americans would get angry and sanction Russia, do you seriously think Europeans would defend the country and the “market”?
No. EU would drop Russia like hot potato, but now Russia would be fully deindustrialized and exposed and ruined.
It would be 90s all over again. I don’t think its a good idea. Russian Rosatom, strategically, is worth more than all of Poland put together. Losing that for a few points of GDP growth, and then total annihilation later, not good.
So it seems there are now three main strands.
Neither of these are correct, but what’s amazing to me is how much energy and effort is put into this pointless quest. Is this the reason why lurid conspiracy theories are so popular? The truth is just too mundane and boring? I also don’t see myself as particularly interesting, which makes this long debate even more bizarre. If I wanted this to go on, I’d keep you guessing but I’ve already categorically stated the truth.
Are you sure that the Balkans are “European”?
What does “European” even mean nowadays? Especially the infamous phrase “European values”?
At any rate, one thing that is definitely clear is that there is nothing “Western” about the Balkans. That much is certain.
This is the reason.
I imagine that military purchasers are probably not googling “jets to buy.” From what I’ve known, there’s usually some project to “revamp website” but it gets pushed to the wayside and never gets done for years at least.
Ha! So you are undead Yuri Besmenov!
I reject nationalism. I used consider myself to be an ecological feminist, but I now realise that feminism is too reactionary as it merely seeks equality and that too through iterative methods of education, which has had dubious successess in the past.
I now favour a gradual cull of manoids to about ~20% of the population which would greatly reduce human conflict. This cull would be done at the womb through sex-selective embryos. Rightoids claim that some races are more responsible for violence than others: this is true (but complicated by reasons of poverty and SES background). What they don’t tell you is that manoids are responsible for the vast supermajority of violence in all societies.
This is likely a genetic impulse which cannot be ‘educated’ away. A 80/20 society would have some amount of problems, but the historical record seems clear that polygamy is easier for women to accept/understand than for manoids. Once genetic engineering gets advanced enough, we could go back to a 50/50 ratio but only on account of an iron-clad guarantee that manoids’ violent impulses be purged from their DNA. Absent this, a 80/20 ratio would become a necessity for the foreseeable future.
So, ur sister married an Indian & now you want to do the opposite of female infanticide?
LOL
Are you for real?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phanariots
Greek Phanariotes were literally Ottoman favorites that they put in the place of Serb Patriarchs because they led the Serb people into rebellions and exiles from South Serbia, that is, North-Albania, Vardar Macedonia and Kosovo-Metohija. The Serbian Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire from the 17th to 19th centuries was practically controlled by Greek Phanariotes because Serb Patriarchs were considered too disobedient and unreliable to Ottoman authorities. Same for other Orthodox Churches (e.g. Bulgarian and maybe Romanian) I believe. Similar thing applies to controlling trade and commerce throughout much of the Ottoman Balkans …
Regarding the Greek Revolution, I don’t think you’d want me to ask where the hell where the Greeks and Phanariotes during the 1st and 2nd Serbian Uprisings (in reality way more Serb rebellions against the Ottomans, but these two are commonly referred to as such) from 1804-1813 and 1815-1817. Especially when the Ottoman Empire crushed the 1st Serbian Uprising from 1813-1815 by deliberately killing 100,000 Serbs (rebel soldiers, but mostly civilians, sacked and burned villages, impalement on pikes, beheadings, and many other unpleasant things) for their attempt at rebellion, with hundreds of thousands of Serbs having fled across the Danube to the Habsburg Empire yet again. This would ultimately trigger Hadzi Prodan’s failed revolt, but more importantly, the somewhat successful 2nd Serbian Uprising after it.
Greeks were actually a hindrance to “Balkan Slavs” (Serbs and Bulgarians really, the Muslim ones were obviously fanatically pro-Ottoman) until 1821. Not to mention the failed Phanariote led revolutions/rebellions in Wallachia/Romania in 1821. There’s also the effort by Phanariotes to try and reform the Ottoman Empire to be an equal Greek-Turkish/Orthodox-Muslim union, although I’m not sure what went on with that besides the fact that nothing came of it for certain reasons I don’t really know.
Still, I think it’s historically noteworthy that Karadjordje Petrovic himself was closely tied to the Greek Revolutionary society Filiki Eteria, and in hindsight would’ve been better off going to fight with the Greeks in 1821 instead of returning to the Principality of Serbia after 1817, only to be executed by Milos Obrenovic in order to appease and successfully negotiate with the Ottoman Empire for slow, but gradual improvements and upgrades in the autonomy and status of the Principality of Serbia (possible mostly because of Russian support combined with Milos Obrenovic’s skilled diplomacy).
Polish Perspective=Thulean Friend? No way. You can’t think clearly, Dmitry. I am disappointed because I have observed a certain amount of growth and maturation in your posts. What possibly could have contribute to your confusion apart from your dislike of PP for his comments on Israel is that PP was probably not Polish Polish but most likely raised abroad, possibly in UK or South Africa with Polish father or mother but not both. His white racialist nationalism with links to Swedish WNs and South Africa and absence of Catholicism in his comments was very atypical for anybody from Poland. His strength was economy and his weakness was economy because he treated it literally with no room for subterranean hidden influences which are not covered in textbooks. This made me think that economics/investment was his occupation or major.
I am not convinced. He kept his Judaism and Zionism in check but at some point he no longer could take all the anti-Jewish abuse going on here, particularly from Ron Unz so he went with his Jewish supremacist gaslighting trolling as an act of defiance that only on the surface was at odds with his previous gaslighting trolling extolling oriental culture and philosophy. Then after some hiatus necessitated by the outpour of hostility towards him and after an alleged trip to China he became a big China skeptic and began to use the arguments from the IQists’ that he used to deride that China was lacking creativity and so on. But his MO is the same: gaslighting that there is something better than you and your white European and American culture that is doomed.
Here is Ron Unz’s recent and from year ago take:
I must admit that I am impressed with AaronB. I am really amazed that creatures like him exist. I do not think he is trolling as an assignment. No, this is his nature and his way he relates and communicates. He is hostile to the traditional European culture. He is proud that it has been conquered and Judaized. And he takes pleasure from observing confusion, squirming, impotence and futility among the WNs whom he knows are traditional enemy of his people.
At least Mongol man and wife couples have lived in a shared yurt/гэр for thousand years.
Projections much? Its like she is describing leftist position towards the opposing viewpoints.
I had some respect for you before but after your promotion of such bullshit, I have no more respect.
China claims coronavirus may have started in AUSTRALIA and travelled to Wuhan’s wet market via frozen steak exports
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9024311/China-claims-coronavirus-started-AUSTRALIA.html
China’s 14 grievances with Australia
‘Incessant wanton interference in China’s Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan affairs’
‘Siding with the US’ anti-China campaign and spreading misinformation’
‘Thinly veiled allegations against China on cyber attacks without any evidence’
‘An unfriendly or antagonistic report on China by media’
Providing funding to ‘anti-China think tank for spreading untrue reports’
‘Foreign interference legislation’
‘Foreign investment decisions’
‘Banning Huawei technologies and ZTE from the 5G network’
‘Politicisation and stigmatisation of the normal exchanges and coorperation between China and Australia’
Making statements ‘on the South China Sea to the United Nations’
‘Outrageous condemnation of the governing party of China by MPs and racist attacks against Chinese or Asian people’
‘The early drawn search and reckless seizure of Chinese journalists’ homes and properties’
Calls for an independent inquiry into Covid-19
‘Legislation to scrutinise agreements with a foreign government’
Speaking of this rugby union game – I briefly saw some of this Australia v Argentina rugby union game on TV the other night .
Now like the vast majority of Australians I have very little interest in this sport ( I was raised on Australian Rules ) but I was rather surprised at how non white the Australian team was .It seemed to have happened almost overnight
I expressed an opinion to family that I’d prefer the Argentineans to win as I’d rather socialise with them as they all looked , well, middle class polite types as opposed to Pacific Islander thugs whom one will always try to avoid whenever possible .
A discussion ensued .
Some but not all understood my position .
I’m a Taoist, quasi-anarchist, and naturalist. I dont like authoritarian systems, whether they are Chinese, White gentile, or Jewish. If Jewish authoritarianism was extolled on this site, as Chinese is, I would criticize it harshly.
On this site, there is a truly sinister and blind promotion of Chinese authoritarianism, which I fight, and a shameful sycophancy towards numbers and size, and an attempt to exploit discontent with the fact that developed economies have hit a natural wall by trying to promote a return to the serf-like conditions of developing economies as an improvement, instead of finally doing the right thing and distributing the benefits of automation fairly among all sectors of society and not just the rich. This cynical ploy by millionaires like Ron is lapped up by low IQ alt right types, who are taught to believe that Chinese elites ruthlessly exploiting their serfs in factories while new billionaires are created daily and inequality soares is “nationalism” and “caring for their people” .
And please note – I do not use the IQist argument that Chinese are not creative, but say Chinese authoritarianism is suppressing the innate creativity of the Chinese.
As a Taoist, I am also hostile to excessive technology and excessive rationalism, whether they are found in Chinese society or White gentile society or Jewish society. I have criticized Jewish rationalism and legalism on this site, and expressed sympathy for mysticism.
I have supported certain strands of Westerm culture, notably Romanticism and French humanism (so called) as found in writers like Montaigne and the skeptical tradition of the French moralistes. I have also expressed enthusiastic admiration for the Greek Pyrhhonians. I have also expressed admiration for European art and architecture. I have also expressed qualified admiration for Catholicism and Orthodoxy, while noting their Manichean tendencies.
I have opposed the Enlightenment, scientism, and positivism. As a Taoist, I oppose the Promethean impulse as based on a mistake, and the manichean philosophy that underlies Christianity. At the same time, I’ve admitted it has led to the unsurpassed glory of European history.
My view is too nuanced and dialectical for you to understand, because you are a Manichean thinker who does not see gray but only good and evil. I even say the CCP may have a positive role to play in China’s development, as much as I think ultimately it must be overcome ultimately.
But Manichean thinkers are constitutionally incapable of understanding dialectical thinkers. So I leave you to the consolations of your conspiracy theories, such as they are.
Master troll!
You really are trying too hard, Cholas didnt conquer anything in Southeast Asia, but they made Srivijaya weaker, which later helped the rise of young Muslim Malay sultanates.
Also the Southeast Asia was already thoroughly culturally Indianized, all lands of Southeast except Northern Vietnam, had Indian derived scripts, dances, rudimentary caste system, revered Ramayana and Mahabharata, were religiously Buddhist or Hindu, or mix of both, even the far flung Philippines were culturally under a strong Indian influence. No offence towards Chinese, but Chinese have historically lacked cultural soft power, only those areas which couldnt import their culture elsewhere, imported culture from China, or those lands which were conquered by the China. So Japan, Korea and Northern Vietnam were only areas 500 years ago that were culturally sinified and outside of direct Chinese rule, even South-Central Vietnam ruled by Champas was thoroughly Indianized and Sanskritized society, with a caste system and Hinduism.
Even Mongols have hugely absorbed Indian culture, but very little of Chinese, I dont know why things are so? Maybe because the Chinese writing system was much more complicated than the syllable based Indic ones?
Malay Peninsula – Buddhist majority
Sumatra – Buddhist majority, with a large Hindu minority
Borneo – Hindu majority
Java – maybe slight Hindu majority, with a large Buddhist minority
Siam- Buddhist majority
Burma – Buddhist majority
Cambodia, in old times southern Vietnam or Cochinchina was part of Cambodia – Hindu majority
Champa – Hindu majority
Philippines – mixed, maybe a Hindu majority
Even Yunnan in Southeast China was a mix of Indian and Chinese culture before their conquest by the Ming
Tibet – their culture is practically a continuation of Medieval Indian Buddhist society, before the Islamic invasions
Okay Manchus derived some of their cultural practices from three sources, from Mongols, from their native traditions and from the Chinese, still their emperors were followers of Tibetan Buddhism, though some politicized revisionists claim that they were only Buddhists for political reasons, if it was so then its quite strange that Kangxi and Qianlong, the greatest emperors of Qing, wrote thousands of copies of Buddhist sutras, didnt demand prostration from high lamas, which is quite verboten in traditional chinese concept of emperor as the highest on earth and Qianglong even bowed or made prostrations to his guru the Lama Rolpay Dorje in private ceremonies! I think that Kangxi also bowed to the lama Zanabazar, but about that Im not 100% sure.
But Chinese had a higher state of technological development, at least during the Song, Ming and Qing,, maybe even during the Tang, they were a great source of inventions and innovations.
Therefore people should not say that one is substantially better than another, for one has been more preoccupied with the momentary or conventional problems and another more with the existential problems.
Though he who has humility, or is humble towards the truth and id eager to learn, is always superior! Which is something that progressives and квасной патриотs dont have.
Ps. Shaivism was the preferred form of Hinduism in Southeast Asia, which is understandable, after all they are closest to the Buddhism among the Hindu sects or faiths….
Taiwan is the key to containing China.
Also, supposedly (((I))) am deconstructing traditional White gentile society, yet the things I oppose most strongly are the Enlightenment, scientism, and positivism, which are modern reactions against tradition, and which are precisely the acid that dissolved traditional White gentile society.
While I oppose these trends wholeheartedly, I have expressed qualified admiration for Christianity, and frequently use Jesus to illustrate values I admire, while opposing primarily the manichean element in Christianity. I have also praised traditional art.
When it comes to China, I am precisely promoting a return to its traditional Taoist culture, and oppose the ways it has adopted the above mentioned trends from the West. So how am (((I))) trying to deconstruct the traditional culture of China?
Your scheme is incoherent and makes no sense.
I always thought it was linked to economies of scale. Fewer media is produced for the Hungarian market than the four times larger Polish market, and the things that get produced are in general of poorer quality, so even less visible abroad.
That said, Hungary won more Oscars for best foreign movies than Poland (two vs. one, though one of the Hungarian Oscars was won by a Holocaust movie, so some might disregard it), and I believe has more nominations, certainly on a per capita basis.
Have you ever dealt with Anglo whites?
Do you believe enlightenment liberalism is universal & objective?
I never had any respect for you, you’re a white larper acting as if you’re an authority Dharma.
Imagine, a gora buddha giving advice on Kshatra
You’re fundamentally, in a conflict of interest..
Don’t act as if your white skin being attacked isn’t the reason you find it “bullshit”
The languages of the UN are 4/6 European + Arabic/Chinese
White supremacy shapes the world, and takes it away from seeing Maya as an illusion.
Its defeat will lead to Good things, you’re either anti-White or anti-Dharma||
I know you won’t understand what I mean by “White” or anything else, since ESL.
Next time, don’t take the bait. 🙂
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
You are throwing baby out with the bathwater. I despise the Anglo civilization, and desire its fall, I spit on their enlightenment and liberal values, but its not like Russians, Germans, Italians or small people like Finns or Serbs are at fault. In my understanding all Europeans are white, not just Anglos.
I was born to a Buddhist mother, how its larping in such situation? And Im more Kshatriya than you are, I have served in the army, have you? Mongols were traditionally classified as Kshatriyas in Buddhist texts, so at least I have served in the army and I have Kshatriya blood, but thats not all, Three of four of my great grandfathers fought in the second world war, Im not sure about the fourth, maybe. So who is larping as Kshatriya and who really is? How many of your relatives have fought in a war?
This is what Buddha criticized, people are what they do, not what their heritage is, so okay you guys established one Pakistani size empire for a relatively short time, served as sepoys for the British and now woohoo you are the martial master race of the whole earth for eternity?
Yes Sanskrit should be on the list, or at least Hindi
Shameful mistake from me, some travelling Indian monks categorised people of steppes as members of Kshatriya class, meaning Sakas, Mongols etc. Its not like there is Buddhist scriptures which claim so.
But Mughal is the Persian name for the Mongols, and I very much believe that Mughals were more of Kshatriya.
Here is the couple portraits of Babur the founder of Mughal Empire, who still had quite much Mongol blood, before Mughals mixed with the Indians.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Emperor_babur.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Babur_and_Humayun.jpg/340px-Babur_and_Humayun.jpg
But Ha haa there is a Jain text, Sanskrit Hammīra-Mahākāvya, where the Mongolian warrior Mahimashahi, is the embodiment of the warrior’s duty, and he serves as an example for others on how to become Rajput. He fights with the Rajputs against the Muslim Turks and even burns wives in Jauhar. So it seems that ancient Rajputs acknowledged Mongols as Kshatriyas!
No one is disputing the Kshyatriyaness of the Rajputs, those guys are the very epitome of being of a Kshatriya.
That is a unusual interpretation of history.
The Phanariotes were not Ottoman favourites but very clever. There was never any chance Serb patriarchs were to be appointed as the grand prize for the Ottomans was the Roman empire (Byzantium) – even what was left it. And the people who controlled ecclesiastical organ of that empire were the Romioi (Greeks). Therefore, the obvious choice were the Greek patriarchs. Serb rebellions played no role (it is more accurate to call them localised revolts) as there were many Greek revolts too but that did not stop the Ottomans appointing Greek prelates. The fact that Greek patriarchs controlled the Slavic churches should be admired for the cleverness of the Phanariotes. Unfortunately, the Greek mistake was not converting most of those Slavs fully to Hellenic culture. The job was only partially completed with their conversion to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
The Serbian uprisings were simply localised revolts and not national in character, and the Serbs (whom I admire) were not able to exploit the international situation as cleverly as the Greeks a few years later. For example, the Greeks based their Revolution on Enlightenment values to appeal to the young men agitating all over Europe i.e. as soon as they largely cleared the Peloponnese of the Ottoman scourge, they created a constitution, senate, executive and a kind of parliament which made them respectable in the eyes of Europeans. This did not happen in the Serbian case. However, they also sidelined the more radical Jacobin Revolutionaries that scared the conservative powers such as Britain and Russia. The Greeks also had an advantage in exploiting the growing Philhellenism of western Europeans. This was a tool that was never available to the Serbs.
The effort by Phanariotes to try and reform the Ottoman Empire to be an equal Greek-Turkish/Orthodox-Muslim union was really only a minority movement and never gained much favour from the leaders of the Revolution.
Please do not take the above as slight on Serbs. Greeks and Serbs and have long history of fighting the same enemies and have a strong mutual appreciation. However, the Greeks have generally been better at reading the external situation (although not always like in 1919-1922) and they used to have the additional tool of Philhellenism at their disposal. Given most of Europe’s youth is now enthralled with Afro-Islamic culture and knowledge of the classics means Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa rather than Thucydides of Plato then this tool is now useless.
That is a unusual interpretation of history.
The Phanariotes were not Ottoman favourites but very clever. There was never any chance Serb patriarchs were to be appointed as the grand prize for the Ottomans was the Roman empire (Byzantium) – even what was left it. And the people who controlled ecclesiastical organ of that empire were the Romioi (Greeks). Therefore, the obvious choice were the Greek patriarchs. Serb rebellions played no role (it is more accurate to call them localised revolts) as there were many Greek revolts too but that did not stop the Ottomans appointing Greek prelates. The fact that Greek patriarchs controlled the Slavic churches should be admired for the cleverness of the Phanariotes. Unfortunately, the Greek mistake was not converting most of those Slavs fully to Hellenic culture. The job was only partially completed with their conversion to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
The Serbian uprisings were simply localised revolts and not national in character, and the Serbs (whom I admire) were not able to exploit the international situation as cleverly as the Greeks a few years later. For example, the Greeks based their Revolution on Enlightenment values to appeal to the young men agitating all over Europe i.e. as soon as they largely cleared the Peloponese of the Ottoman scourge, they created a constitution, senate, executive and a kind of parliament which made them respectable in the eyes of Europeans. This did not happen in the Serbian case. However, they also sidelined the more radical Jacobin Revolutionaries that scared the conservative powers such as Britain and Russia. The Greeks also had an advantage in exploiting the growing Philhellenism of western Europeans. This was a tool that was never available to the Serbs.
The effort by Phanariotes to try and reform the Ottoman Empire to be an equal Greek-Turkish/Orthodox-Muslim union was really only a minority movement and never gained much favour from the leaders of the Revolution.
Please do not take the above as slight on Serbs. Greeks and Serbs and have long history of fighting the same enemies and have a strong mutual appreciation. However, the Greeks have generally been better at reading the external situation (although not always like in 1919-1922) and they used to have the additional tool of Philhellenism at their disposal. Given most of Europe’s youth is now enthralled with Afro-Islamic culture and knowledge of the classics means Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa rather than Thucydides of Plato then this tool is now useless.
That is a unusual interpretation of history.
The Phanariotes were not Ottoman favourites but very clever. There was never any chance Serb patriarchs were to be appointed as the grand prize for the Ottomans was the Roman empire (Byzantium) – even what was left it. And the people who controlled ecclesiastical organ of that empire were the Romioi (Greeks). Therefore, the obvious choice were the Greek patriarchs. Serb rebellions played no role (it is more accurate to call them localised revolts) as there were many Greek revolts too but that did not stop the Ottomans appointing Greek prelates. The fact that Greek patriarchs controlled the Slavic churches should be admired for the cleverness of the Phanariotes. Unfortunately, the Greek mistake was not converting most of those Slavs fully to Hellenic culture. The job was only partially completed with their conversion to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy.
The Serbian uprisings were simply localised revolts and not national in character, and the Serbs (whom I admire) were not able to exploit the international situation as cleverly as the Greeks a few years later. For example, the Greeks based their Revolution on Enlightenment values to appeal to the young men agitating all over Europe i.e. as soon as they largely cleared the Peloponese of the Ottoman scourge, they created a constitution, senate, executive and a kind of parliament which made them respectable in the eyes of Europeans. This did not happen in the Serbian case. However, they also sidelined the more radical Jacobin Revolutionaries that scared the conservative powers such as Britain and Russia. The Greeks also had an advantage in exploiting the growing Philhellenism of western Europeans. This was a tool that was never available to the Serbs.
The effort by Phanariotes to try and reform the Ottoman Empire to be an equal Greek-Turkish/Orthodox-Muslim union was really only a minority movement and never gained much favour from the leaders of the Revolution.
Please do not take the above as slight on Serbs. Greeks and Serbs and have long history of fighting the same enemies and have a strong mutual appreciation. However, the Greeks have generally been better at reading the external situation (although not always like in 1919-1922) and they used to have the additional tool of Philhellenism at their disposal. Given most of Europe’s youth is now enthralled with Afro-Islamic culture and knowledge of the classics means Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa rather than Thucydides of Plato then this tool is now useless.
Oof, the rabid nationalism of small nations, I’ve heard enough of my own variants of this, it’s all so tiresome.
Eventually ordinary people get so sick of what feels like omnipresent and played-up fanaticism it allows traitors like Pashinyan to (briefly) look almost attractive in comparison. If anyone cares, the bastard still hasn’t resigned, if anyone was wondering, although more scandals and leaks are coming out from his cabinet everyday.
This sounds like a cope to justify Greek Phanariote collaboration with the Ottoman Empire in exploiting Christian Slavic populations, no offense. I believe that some Phanariotes had semi-Jewish ties/connections (mostly the merchant/non-Church ones), so they weren’t 100% Greek.
From here on, you’re just betraying your ignorance of Serb history.
This statement is factually wrong because there where a whole bunch of Serb Patriarchs who were appointed with the approval of the Ottoman Empire, to lead the Serb population and help in managing the affairs of Serbs in the Ottoman Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Serbs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makarije_Sokolovi%C4%87
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenije_III_Crnojevi%C4%87
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenije_IV_Jovanovi%C4%87_%C5%A0akabenta
These 3 guys are the most famous Patriarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church approved by the Ottoman Empire (there are many others).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Patriarchate_of_Pe%C4%87
If Ottoman Sultan Mustafa III was so happy with his Serb subjects, why abolish the Serbian Patriarchate of Pec in the 18th century and hand over most of its administration to Greek Phanariotes?
Because the Serbs were constantly loyal and faithful subjects of the Ottoman Empire?
LOL
Is this the Greek equivalent of Jewish Chutzpah (racially inferior Slav goyim!)?
Greeks have always betrayed an attitude of racial and ethnic contempt for Slavs. Most of it is saved for Monkeydonians, then Bulgarians, although I don’t judge because I haven’t seen Greeks speak of Serbs in such a way.
According to you, no other Christian nation besides Greeks existed before the 19th century in the Ottoman Empire. You’re just copying Western Liberals in your approach to nationalism, nationhood and ethnicity by claiming that those are all artificial 18th/19th century constructs, similar to AP.
There is a large amount of objective primary sources I can cite which debunk your claim that there was “nothing national in character” about “Serb localised revolts”. Also, doesn’t the fact that they’re localized in certain regions (in which ethnic Serbs lived, and rightfully belong to them of course) tell you that in fact those were Serb national/ethnic revolts?
Admirations aside, you clearly don’t know much of anything about the 1st Serbian Uprising at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughter_of_the_Knezes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Serbian_Uprising
The 1st Serbian Uprising was triggered by the abuse and excesses of the Janissary class in the Sumadjia region/Pashalik of Belgrade against Serbs. The “Сеча Кнезова” or the “Slaughter of the Knezes” was the direct cause of the 1st Serbian Uprising. It was literally a popular uprising against being subjected to immediate and arbitrary terror by Janissaries. It then later evolved into a full on-national revolution after Serbs chose to reject Icko’s Peace offer with the Ottoman Empire for autonomy and instead joined Russia in open war against the Ottoman Empire. Possibly a strategic mistake/error in hindsight, among a few others Serbs made in the 1st Serbian Uprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C4%8Dko's_Peace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War_(1806%E2%80%931812)
(Serbs fought together with Russia on the Balkan Front in that Russo-Turkish War above, but the Wiki link redirects you to the link about the 1st Serbian Uprising).
As for the 2nd Serbian Uprising, it’s clear that Milos Obrenovic’s choice to pursue autonomy under the Ottoman Empire and gradually push for greater sovereignty for Serbia over the years and decades to come was the wise one in hindsight. Although Russia won the Napoleonic Wars, it was hesitant to directly go to war for Serbia’s sake (understandably given the Congress of Vienna and European hostility to Russia) but the possibility of Russia attacking the Ottoman Empire and indirectly backing Serbia was good enough to let Milos Obrenovic take his chances and succeed with skilled diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Serbian_Uprising
Perhaps the geopolitical position and circumstance of Greeks and Serbs was different?
After all, the only great powers that cared about the 1st Serbian Uprising where the Ottomans, Habsburgs and Russia. Serbs chose to side with Russia because it offered them immediate help and support. Although Karadjordje approached the Habsburgs for an offer of Serbia becoming a client state, he was rejected because the Habsburgs were too busy with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. In fact, the greatest reason for the failure of the 1st Serbian Uprising was that Serbs tied their fate to Russia (not that there were other good alternatives) and ultimately became collateral damage in Napoleon’s attack against Russia. Napoleon’s troops from around 1800-1810’s occupied much of modern-day Croatia and there was even a possibility of the French Army going into the Ottoman Empire to attack the Russians in Wallachia/Bulgaria and crush Serbia (the geopolitics was a bit complex, like usual in the Balkans, but Napoleon’s France supported the Ottoman Empire against Russia for most of this war, which was bad for Serbs of course). In 1812, 13 days before Napoleon attacked Russia, The Russian Empire signed the Treaty of Bucharest (1812) and in Article 8 achieved guarantees for the autonomy of Serbia, although these were later fragrantly broken and violated by the Ottoman Empire (not surprising considering the nature of Turks) when Russia couldn’t threaten the Ottomans with military force for their violations …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Bucharest_(1812)
You’re confirming my point about the different geo-political situation of Greeks and Serbs.
I don’t. I also agree about the shared history and mutual bonds. Although facts are facts.
Another unpleasant fact is that the Kingdom of Greece squirmed out of its Treaty obligation to side with Serbia in WW1 in 1914 (understandable due to Greece’s position, but it’s still a fact).
Still, I don’t judge Greeks badly either because of the above fact, Greek Phanariotes, or the fact that Serbs and Greeks fought many wars against each other in the Medieval Ages from the arrival of Serbs in the Balkans around 600 AD (yes, I’ve come to the conclusion this is true despite some Serbs LARPing we are ancient 6000 BC Vinca Sarmatians/Indian tribe/whatever etc) to the 14th century.
More modern positive facts overshadow that for me (and most Serbs of course). E.g. The alliance of Greece and Serbia in the 1st and 2nd Balkan War (against the Ottoman Empire and then Bulgaria), Greece allowing Serbs and the Serbian Army to retreat to Greece in WW1 to continue fighting on the Thessaloniki front in a time of great mortal danger for Serbs despite Greece’s difficult geopolitical position, and Greeks in the 1990’s having massive popular sympathy for the Serb side in the wars of Yugoslavia’s break-up.
The last point was shown clearly by Greek nationalists sending a volunteer unit to fight with the VRS (Army of Republika Srpska) in Bosnia and participate in the capture of Srebrenica in 1995 (LOL, I’ve apparently even heard claims that Greek volunteers participated in the “Srebrenica Genoicde”), Greek families volunteering to care for/adopt Serb refugee children and babies from all over the Former Yugoslavia, and in 1999 Greeks overwhelmingly opposed the NATO bombing with Greek naval captain Marinos Ritsoudis refusing to participate in the NATO aggression, even if it involved only moving a Greek naval ship to enforce the naval blockade over FR Yugoslavia.
http://thesrpskatimes.com/marinos-ritsoudis-a-greek-captain-who-refused-to-bomb-serbia-1999/
http://thesrpskatimes.com/exclusive-intervies-marinos-ritsoudis-the-soldier-who-was-awarded-because-he-refuse-to-kill/
Not so sure about that. Especially not in the 21st century where Greece is handicapped by its “Euro-Atlantic” ties in effectively resisting Erdogan’s aggressions, while Serbia has a chance (not certain) to stand successfully against NATO and its Balkan proxies with the strength of China-Russia ties. Although we’ll see, I guess.
Literally everything seems rigged against Christian Europeans in this day and age though, especially against small Eastern Christian nations (not that they should indulge themselves in the delusion that they are actually “European”) …
Don’t say …
My bad.
Forgot to add these two things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C4%8Dko's_Peace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E2%80%93Serbian_Alliance_of_1807
That’s just silly.
Perhaps it testifies to the immaturity of the Chinese consumer market that such purchases occur. I have a hard time believing that a western middle class family would so carelessly splash out on such an expensive model for a beginner child – who may or may not even enjoy it – when there is no need.
Digital pianos have come a long way and are a perfectly acceptable substitute for acoustic pianos for beginning piano students. The main feature you need to concern yourself with is the key action. Acoustic keys are ‘naturally’ weighted and have a characteristic feel when playing. Digital pianos can simulate this either poorly or well, but nowadays even entry models to a decent job of it. It would be a cinch for western consumers to come across this information. Even the music store sales attendants — who tend to be musicians first and salesmen second – would inform them of this rather than try to offload an acoustic on unsuspecting dupes.
lol. Armenian lecturing others about small nation nationalism.
Well that’s why “ordinary people” get what they deserve at the end of the day. Their national enemies eventually come after them, attack them, take their land, commit a whole bunch of crimes and atrocities against their nation, and force them out from their living space.
I decided to follow internal Armenian politics from what seems to be a good English language Armenian source (I actually think it’s so good that ideally there would be a Serb equivalent, especially the spirit, refinement and nuance with which they write).
It seems like I’ve underestimated just how bad Nikol Pashinyan is for Armenians and Armenia (it makes Serbia’s internal politics under Vucic look good):
https://thearmenite.com/2020/11/globalist-liberal-armenians-and-nikol-pashinyan/
https://thearmenite.com/2020/11/who-comes-next-armenia-next-leader/
https://thearmenite.com/2020/11/an-unequal-relationship-armenia-and-russia/
https://thearmenite.com/2020/12/prioritizing-stability-and-unity-armenia-alen-zamanyan/
I think a description from the Turkish Daily Sabah (yes, I bothered to read them a bit because it serves as a good reflection of Turko-Muslim opinion, especially interesting is everything they write to do with Israel), about Nikol Pashinyan’s Armenia, is that “Armenia is working against its own existence”.
Srivijaya’s official religion was Buddhist, not Hindu, which made them weaker (no offence). They had Hindu elements within them, but this was not state policy.
Secondly, even many ‘Hindu’ traditions were amalgations of local tribal customs. If you ever visit India, you can see some of these similarities in places like Assam where there are shades of Hinduism mixed with a lot vernacular traditions among adivasis and others. All of this meant a weaker core.
It is important to underline that what passed for ‘Hinduism’ in SEA wasn’t the real deal and often a syncretic mix compared to back home. Furthermore, this cultural influence was not as strong as you assume, especially if you went further inland.
The Cholas suffered from none of these things, which is why if their success in thoroughly saffronising SEA would have succeeded, there would be a much deeper immune system to moslems later on.
P.S. you should read this in relation to our previous debate.
Those goyishe kops don’t appreciate your supple Semitic intellect, and that which they do not understand, they lash out in anger against.
“I believe that some Phanariotes had semi-Jewish ties/connections (mostly the merchant/non-Church ones), so they weren’t 100% Greek.”
I’d be really interested if you could provide some credible documentation that might help to back up this belief. Not sure why cleverness in political and business dealings is synonymous with Jewishness. I would say it is simply function of operating a long-standing empire.
With all due respect, there was no way the Ottoman would have handed over control of the Orthodox population to Serbian clerics. Note, Serbs were situated at the north-western part of the empire whereas Greeks were spread across Asia Minor, Greece and concentrated in Constantinople. This gave the Ottomans are ready-made resource spread across the Orthodox millet. Also, Greek was the prestige language of Christianity, not Serbian. An Orthodox cleric in Syria or Greece or Albania would have had a working knowledge of Greek even if they were not ethnically Greek. However, the Serbian language did not have that status.
“According to you, no other Christian nation besides Greeks existed before the 19th century in the Ottoman Empire.”
I never made that claim. I made a specific claim about the character of the revolts.
“Perhaps the geopolitical position and circumstance of Greeks and Serbs was different?”
Of course. Also, the social structure of each nation differed. Greece had a very important merchant class that was spread across Europe and could link into sources of financial support. The Serbs were largely an agricultural people at that time.
I would not be so sure which side it is better to be on, Euro-Atlantic or Russia. I am not always happy with the EU, NATO and the Americans but do not underestimate Russia’s weakness to project power beyond its border. Just witness how they recently let Turks overunn an ancient Christian land.
I don’t have a very firm opinion on this, but some people might be unaware that the issue is too low inflation, and has been since 2008. The stated goal of the cheap money policies is to accelerate inflation. So giving some money to the poor would actually make some sense.
Maybe the real Indians were the friends we made along the way.
https://qz.com/566050/people-who-like-pseudo-profound-quotes-are-not-so-smart-says-science/
Either intentionally or otherwise, you have a fondness for promoting less effective things that would almost certainly lead directly to worse lives for those involved here, while claiming that it is the “true nature of things.” Its really not an uncommon manipulation tactic, and it shouldn’t be surprising that you keep getting called on it.
There’s probably a very real component of economy of scale there so I’m glad to concede on that. My main point was to remove the direct association with GDP per capita to soft power, which is a very flawed ratio to consider.
If you need a study to validate your narrow mindedness, then do what makes you happy.
Please realize, too, that “effectiveness” is not actually a value – it presupposes a value. My values are quite different than yours, so what effectively promotes my values is not what effectively promotes your values.
The idea that “effectiveness” can substitute for values and be worshipped on its own, is one of the weirder ideas to have emerged in modernity. A strange God indeed.
It is based, of course, on the mistake that all humans share all values and the same vision of the good life, and the only question, then, is why some societies better achieve the values of modern technological society, which humans universally desire, it is assumed. The question becomes merely one of technique, and societies which fail to achieve the full modern vision, are judged incapable, not indifferent.
It is beyond the scope of modernity, to self-reflect – meta-reflect, if you will – and question its assumption that its values are universally shared. To be fair, this blind cultural narcissism lies at the heart of all universalizing systems.
Finally, if people want to “call me out”, they are welcome- I enjoy being showed where I am wrong. But they have an obligation to construct a minimally coherent critique. Utu failed in that.
On teh interwebz, one always needs to allow for irony, sarcasm and the possibility of people enjoying bullshit for its counter-intuitive/counter-probabilistic or aesthetic quality. Here’s the most profound statement about the “true nature of things” I’ve read lately:
Halloween and Christmas are essentially one and the same thing, because OCT 31 = DEC 25 = BIN 11001.
Nonsense Buddhist societies are not less or more aggressive than Hindu ones. Not in the old times, or in modern times, actually Hindus are often more tolerant towards their Muslims minorities than Buddhists are.
I mostly agree on this, still the culture of the elites in the Southeast Asia was highly Indianized, and its not like Cholas themselves were free from local influences that predated Hinduism, there was much less of Sankritization than in neighbouring lands, anyone who has travelled in Southern India knows that the local Hinduism is quite peculiar and different from the Hinduism of North and Central India. They even have lots of gods that are just worshipped in the south and many strange local cults, so again situation is more similar to Assam, especially when speaking of Tamils, their culture and religion is quite indigenous, even Keralites have lost much of their Dravidian culture in comparison.
So Hindudharma is flexible like Buddhadharma with the local traditions, if you dont know this then you probably are not an Indian.
So I dont at all agree with this point that limited Sanskritization or Indianization of society made them weaker.
Tamils had their ancient literature and religious traditions from the Sangam period, which had independent and separate development from the Vedic culture, later Chola period was synthesis of traditional Tamil culture with the northern more Vedic influences. Southeast Asia had undergone a slow cultural Indianization from the beginning of the western calendar, lands like Burma probably even before that. Half or more of the words in the Malay and Indonesian language are derived from Sanskrit, I am not sure about Tamil but I think it may have as many loanwords from Sanskrit or less, but not more.
Dravidian states still couldnt beat small invading Muslim armies, the true liberators of India were foremostly Marathas and then the Sikhs, and both are from the Indo-Aryan stock. But I have sympathy for Dravidians, Buddhism endured in their lands much, much longer than in the north and two out of the five major classical Tamil epics were written by Tamil Buddhists.
Also both Buddhism and Hindudharma are as weak or strong before the Islam, Siamese and Arakanese didnt have problems like the Malays, who were politically very fragmented and decentralised, maybe one reason among many why mobile religion like Islam suited for Malays.
Buddhists and Hindus are brothers, real brothers, I dont know how these strange internet Indians think, but in India relations between Hindus and Buddhists are universally amicable. There is genuine solidarity between our faiths, which sadly is not possible with the universalistic Abrahamic faiths.
Thanks for your link, I will read it later.
PLAN Type 003 supercarrier in dock.
Probably upper-deck finished by Q1/Q2 2021. Lauching probably Q2 2022.
https://imgur.com/QeRD296
Reddit can be so frustrating–in some sub-reddits there may be one hundred idiots for each expert.
It is particularly irritating when the true experts get downvoted by the idiots.
But–I agree that the few experts can be totally amazing–they have taught me more about some of my favorite hobbies than I could have learned anywhere else.
In some countries the public has a say in what they are buying. Though admittedly not all that many countries, and even fewer are potential customers of either China or Russia.
I completely agree with you. I, too, think that you used to be an ecological feminist, but that now you have become more radical. I also think that now you support the culling of male embryos to achieve an 80/20 female/male ratio.
You do not need genetic engineering for that, you only need One World Government to solve the problems of sexed sperm for humanity.
https://www.agweb.com/article/how-it-works-sex-sorted-semen-NAA-university-news-release
This also has the upside of providing better huflesh steaks to our alien overlords when they conquer us.
How could the public be expected to have a good judgment on the specs of a military item, which are likely partly classified even in a well designed public advertisement?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EofTagkW4AUe14J.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRa40PTYe2O1hju_N1Oik_Ljk-y2-NXh9waJQ&usqp.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/D5pR5MZ.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/IuMuB7Q.jpeg
In the garbage, I see a rose.
In the rose, I see the garbage.
Everything is in transformation.
Even permanence is impermanent.
In summation, you can give all of your money here so you can transform into your perfect rose-garbage form:
https://www.patreon.com/akarlin
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/swiss-reject–3.5-billion-gripen-purchase-in-blow-to-saab/38607010
Don’t be ridiculous.
You are just an anonymous internet character. No one really cares about you or anyone else here that is also anonymous.
The reason this is a point of discussion is because of how bad Indian trolls are. No other group is as aggressive or cringey as Indians.
So all over the internet people are constantly trying to separate legitimate posters from Indian trolls and their many sock puppets.
Thanks India!
What, you mean like poop?
Beautiful!
Wow, what a hypocrit.
You yourself are the biggest manichean thinker here.
You see a black and white world where you are either living in a total dictatorship (bad) or in total anarchy (good).
As someone who appreciates Taoism and is a libertarian I think this is ridiculous and totally synthetic.
Its more likely that you are threatened by Chinas rise and don’t like where you see yourself in this future compared to one where China is poor and backwards.
You are the worst kind of liberal. You try to pretend you are sympathetic or trying to help a country, when you are really trying your hardest to keep them down.
Despite being only 77% of the population
https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/BRmJdzBsCixN5JQ99MMhk7ZdCew=/1484×0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/G2EFTRECGNGAZGHFUHCJORKHII.png
Sex-havers commit 100% of rape.
How come you always get so defensive about China but at the same time claim to not be Chinese? You claim to be “Asian-American” but I have never seen any non-Chinese Mongoloid Asians so supportive of China.
You don’t need these hypotheses. He/she/it is just a libtard. Libtards always destroy the countries where they gain traction: just look at the US “democrats” or EU cucks.
Some people here say Chinese elites care about their serfs, because they don’t seek to replace them with foreign serfs.
I am beginning to think this is correct. But then Chinese serfs, have been loyal to Chinese elites, and are willing to be properly docile and hard working serfs. Have American serfs?
American serfs want to have a friendly elite that keeps their ethnic majority intact, but have American serfs displayed anything like the submissive, docile loyalty and willingness to sacrifice their own lives for the elites, that the Chinese serfs have? No, American serfs are entitled and demanding – they demand this thing called “rights”, this thing called “dignity”, and actually expect non-dangerous working conditions – they demand a work/life balance and are unwilling to sacrifice their best years to enrich American elites.
Feudalism is a reciprocal relationship. If the serfs are not docile, submissive, and loyal, how can the elites be loyal?
Obviously the American elites have to import better serfs! A new strategy being adopted by the American elites seems also to be to convince American serfs to be more like Chinese serfs. Look how good the Chinese have it! Their living standards are rising. Yours are merely at an already high level. Wouldn’t you rather be rising? You too can be rising , if only you become good self sacrificing serfs like China has.
This incidentally is also proof that Thulean Friend is actually Indian because:
It is known that through these telepathic journeys that the Theosophical Society often used pseudonyms, and the “farthest North” can also be understood as the “Deepest Underground,” which is a reference to Vril, the people of Hollow Earth. “Thule” is “farthest North”, and therefore Thulean reveals himself as a “friend” of the “farthest North” of “Vril.”
The Vril are actually the “Coming Race”, who have long practiced their arts in secret and were defeated only by the principles of the stars that have led to our Evolian fallen age of Kali Yuga(Dark Age). Evola has said that it is the principle of femininity to serve, and in order to become who we truly are, ergo servants, we must become more female.
We further know this is true because the Vedas have spoken of space travel, but this is to be understood as astral travels into the Inner Universe of humanity and the lost knowledge of the Ages aided by powerful all-natural plant-based gluten-free mystic tools.
With their return, they will hold sway and we have to prepare for them by arranging our society in a properly aesthetic and ordered way so that we can be more easily reprocessed into maximally efficient food partners. By this, we can transform into a greater being of order(after digestion in their guts).
Indians are cannibal aliens, or their henchmen.
Give up your flesh.
If that were the case, then what happened to the Central Asian buddhists? All gone. Most of East Asia was shielded because India took the hits for it.
History speaks for itself, whether you agree with it or not is immaterial.
Reality is a lot messier than that.
Nobody disagrees with this. Abrahamic colonisation has been the greatest geopolitical crime of the last two thousand years.
https://i.imgur.com/gfbJ3sZ.jpg
Your knowledge of western esoterica is commendable, though such knowledge is quite pointless when there are better established and more authentic philosophical and religious traditions to guide us.
Though their believes are somewhat odd, the Theosophists are genuinely nice people, very comfy, Ive often had dealings with them and I have always enjoyed their company.
I would cheer on China if they invaded this fag country
That was a Jewish film (Son of Saul), not a Hungarian one (although to be honest I did quite enjoy the director’s next film set during the AH period).
I am afraid to say that Polish cinema is vastly superior because of Kieslowski (to a lesser extent Wajda). But then I find Bela Tarr unwatchable
Afghanistan and Pakistan were mix of Hindus, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, they all became Muslim. In Sogdia, present day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan only a minority were Buddhists, most were Manicheans, Nestorians and especially Zoroastrians. Yes the Buddhist majority Xinjiang was lost, but its much more complicated than what you think. Southern Xinjiang,/Tarim Basin/Altinshahr and Kyrgyzstan was still ruled by the Buddhist Kara-Khitais in the 12th century until they were annihilated by Tengrist Chinggis Khan, the Northern part or Dzungaria was settled by Buddhist Oirat Mongols, but Manchus and eastern Khalkha Mongols annihilated them in the end of the 18th century, they also lost 80% population to last major plague epidemic in human history, after the plague and wars their lands were more or less empty of inhabitants, the Qing invited Kazakhs to former lands of Dzungaria, but there are still about 300-400k Oirat remnants, mostly from Torghut tribe, living in the Northern Xinjiang. There were also other factors, but Im trying to explain this topic shortly.
Now you are just trolling with your “India took the hits for it” -stance. There are multiple times in history when major parts of China has been successfully conquered from the north or northeast, but you need to go quite far in history that some nomad group came through Gansu and succeeded in conquering some parts of China. Even the direction of the conquest in the steppes was almost always from the east to the west. The Xiognu came from the east, Turks came from the east Mongols, yes its somewhat puzzling, but Mongol lands are much harsher than the Kazakh steppe, actually Kazakhstan is pleasant and fruitful land compared to conditions of Mongolia, so maybe that made the ancient inhabitants of Mongolia more martial or something.
How you can be so insufferable? Indo-Aryan means Indians who speak Indo-European languages, or are from those cultures that speak IE languages, they are noticeably different from the Dravidian peoples of the south both culturally and linguistically.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Major_Indo-Aryan_languages.png
Here is map of Indo-Aryan peoples.
Yes yes Nepalis and Assamese are outliers and have a highly mixed genetic admixture relative to other Indo-Aryans. But anyway Indo-Aryan is not same as “Aryan,” though they they have a connection.
As a proponent of religious harmony I will not reply to this…
Last major Dharmic kingdom to fall in Afghanistan was by the way Hindu, they had lots of Buddhist inhabitants but the royalty was Hindu. Kabul Shahis or Hindu Shahis they were called, they ruled the lands of Kabulistan and Gandhara till the beginning of the 11th century, before that mleccha and icchantika Mahmud of Ghazni destroyed them and we lost our holy land of Oddiyana/Urgyen!
https://historypak.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/hindu-shahi.jpg
Strange that their Hinduism didnt help them?
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/K525RY/shingerdar-stupa-swat-pakistan-K525RY.jpg
You are truly pozzed, if you want your language to be made an official language of the UN.
I wish they moved their HQ to New Delhi, and conducted all their operations in Hindi and banned all European languages.
In his heart of hearts, even Brahma knows the creation of the Indian race was a mistake.
I’ve had a youth and many, many years of my life misspent with mostly Western occult traditions, most extensively with Hermeticism(and thus my familiarity with Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie, etc), and while I find it mostly dubious these days, I can’t help but admire the essential beauty in much of it. It also provides a great source of information for “powerful takes.”
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Islamic conquests have been terrible and led to much uglification and cruelty (in this way, Islam is the Communism of pre-modern times). The Islamification of Egypt, Anatolia, Persia, Central Asia, India and Indonesia has been a very sad process. But Christianity has done a great service by replacing the demon worship of the cruel Aztecs and overall despite exceptions has been a positive force.
I am not Chinese.
But why do you think anyone defending China has to be Chinese?
I am against imperialism and against the generalized global homo that the west has become.
A couple years ago it was Russia that was under the microscope and China was on the back of peoples mind.
But I defended Russia back then just like I do with Iran and other countries that are being targeted.
Back then you could post anonymously, but Karlin cucked out and made us take handles to post here. Probably back then you would have pegged me as a Russian spy lol.
You are against imperialism but at the same time claim to be a libertarian and presumably also support mass immigration into White countries of ethnic kinsmen?
The director was Jewish Hungarian (from a Jewish mother and a gentile Hungarian father), the actor playing the protagonist was Jewish (of gentile Hungarian blood, adopted and raised by a Jewish guy as an Orthodox (?) Jew), and most people involved were gentile Hungarians, as well as those providing the money.
It was as Hungarian as Jewish. The topic was mostly Jewish, though, but Hungary fought on the side of Germany, and while nowhere near German levels, there’s been quite a bit of soul searching among some gentile Hungarians about the role Hungarians played back then. I’m pretty sure that this topic is more relevant to Hungarians than it is to Britons or Americans.
Consider this movie:
https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hideg_napok_(film)?wprov=sfti1
It’s a fully Hungarian movie, also made during the communist period, but with lots of soul searching, certainly closer to how the Germans would make a movie about such a topic than some imagined “based V4” country.
A flag for a reunified China-Taiwan by combining elements of their current flags together.
https://i.redd.it/7dxltc2a5lf51.png
The mongols decimated Baghdad and most of modern-day Iran (when they were both moslems) yet neither lost their religion. You are just coping with the lower cultural strength of Buddhism vis-a-vis Hinduism.
Chinese Gobi desert shielded them somewhat, given its huge distance and all the logistical nightmares it entails. The Khyber pass by contrast was easily accessible and almost at a moment’s notice could an invading army get access to vast fertile lands.
Final proof you didn’t read the article I sent you 🙂 The issue wasn’t about linguistics or culture, but genetics. While the AIT is a fact – much to the consternation of the Hindu RW and nonsense theories like “out of India” should be discarded – there simply isn’t as clear-cut a delineation as many seem to believe. The roots of both so-called “Indo-Aryans” and “Dravidians” are more tightly conflated.
Proving my point about buddhists being meeker.
The Swedes are alright.
Well, they hate you.
We don’t hate anybody!
‘We don’t hate anybody.’ Well, you should! Makes life more fun.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c-WO73Dh7rY
Given the huge amounts of smears and Hinduhobia in the Western press, I am deeply skeptical to believe all the lurid claims about native American religions at face value, which often serve as moral justifications for abrahamic colonisation.
Even if barbarism like human sacrifice was commonly recorded, we should not forget the witch burnings of Europe (and the central role the church played in fanning the flames, or at very least not trying to stop it). Let alone the gargantuan bloodsheds all in the name of religious maxims.
As for Christianity, I must confess that you folks have better PR agents than the moslems. Even blatant frauds like Mother Teresa are still hailed as a saint in this day and age long after she got exposed for her psychopathy.
A fellow Daily Stormer reader I see.
Indian hostility to Christianity is still quite an unique thing, and arguably one of the strongest signifiers of identity that I’ve seen. Even Muslims, who can be quite hostile to Christianity, tend to condemn it for being polytheist but from what I’ve seen, still believe that it is a level above paganism. Atheists, even extreme ones, seem to condemn all religions equally.
I’ve seen some other pagan religious followers condemn Christianity as secretly evil, or otherwise anti-humanistic, but Indians really do seem to have a fervency that is unmatched.
I find Christianity to be overall beautiful and steak to be delicious. Could have done with more witch burnings to weed out the Lousie Mensch of the world.
This is surely proof that you are a Hindu?
I’m not trying to help China. Helping usually makes things worse, and history follows its predetermined course anyways.
Helping means forcing and interfering, very against the Tao, which is about non-doing.
What I am doing, is describing.
My vision of what I think will happen with China, is that the current authoritarianism is a necessary phase (and thus, with qualifications and reservations, good, for China) after which, will be followed by a loosening up phase where Chinese creativity will be given the opportunity to flourish, as it did in the Tang Dynasty. There will be no creativity under the CCP, and China will hit a wall under the CCP, which will lead to the New Tang phase.
In my opinion, the next stage in world culture is humanizing technology, based on a vision of integrating with nature rather than aggressively dominating it. I think China, along with some countries in Europe, will be leaders here. China will rediscover its Taoist past, and integrate it with its technological present.
Only then will we see the full fruits of technology.
Will it work out this way? Who knows?
I am not even really warning America against Chinese authoritarianism. As I said, events take their own course, and the folly of mankind is limitless.
Gobi is between Mongolia and China and was not obstacle for Xiongnu, Xianbei, Rourans, Turkic Khaganate, Mongols etc.
Hinduism disappeared from Southeast Asia, except couple pockets like Bali and small Champa minority in Vietnam.
Mongols converted to Buddhism after the Chingghis Khaan. So Hindudharma and Buddhadharma are doing quite equally.
Yes I didnt read your article, I dont know about genetics, but if you have seen and been with Punjabis and Tamils, they literally differ phenotypically as much as night and day. Not just the skin colour, but bone structure and facial characteristics. I think that I have read that Punjabis are closer to Afghanis and Iranians than they are to Tamils, you know one of those genetic distance charts. Sometimes man needs to trust his gut instinct.
Now he is just trolling…
The epitome of Kshatra is Khalsa||
The two marks of a man are Kesh and Shastar – you have neither||
As far as who’s “white” I see you as some provincial rube, and you’re paternally Rus xD
Don’t try to understand things above your station||
I’m calling you a bitch, because you are..
Nothing to do with blood, you should know this much about Sikhi||
Songbird, if it has power we want to take it.
Take u’re white fragility elsewhere||
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
https://www.instagram.com/p/B70BnjRF54p/
Is the notion of free will the source of much suffering in the world? If things develop out of inner necessity, then our belief that we can control events may be just a fiction that leads to pointless frustration.
Our fights, our passions, our anxieties, are based on the idea that things can be other than they are.
In Japanese Pure Land Buddhism – the final development of Buddhism- we are told there is no need to try and do good whatsoever. When asked if this will not lead to evil behavior, the response is, do you find in yourself the desire to murder?
When I am generous or kind, and avoid hurting someone, its because I feel an inner desire to be like that, not because of any religious instruction. It is its own reward.
In Mahayana Buddhism, we are taught to see the self, as an agent standing outside things and controlling them, as an illusion. With no self, there is no free will.
Alexandra David-Neel was a great French woman explorer of Tibet in the 19th century, and she wrote a book called the Secret Doctrines of Tibet, in which she was taught by a Tibetan guru the essence of Buddhism; events take their predetermined course according to cause and effect and karma, we do not exist as seperate selves, and we can control nothing.
She was also told, average people cannot understand this message.
Taoism believes in wu wei, literally non doing, or not forcing events but going with the grain – or the trend – of things naturally.
The ancient Greek Pyrrhonians thought we cannot know anything and we cannot figure out how to live using reason, but must suspend all preferences and judgements and live spontaneously and according to custom. Very similar to Mahayana Buddhism, books have been written on the connection between the two.
The Epicureans and Stoics also taught lack of free will.
Actually Khyber pass, Northwest frontier and Waziristan are easily defendable in comparison to that what Chinese needed to deal with. Its always been puzzling to me that Indians had natural fortification in Hindukush and how badly they utilised it. Actually Gobi isnt even between China and Mongolia, but between the Northern Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, Inner Mongolia is prime land for sheep grazing and pasturing, so again the Chinese frontier was harder to defend, think about it, thousands of kilometres steppe frontier!
You Bagdad example is low quality trolling effort, three of the four Mongol Khanates converted to Islam, and its not like Iran and Iraq endured for hundred years under a non muslim rule.
Joseph Needham.
I have been noticing among Chinese nationalists, a distinctive debating style.
Basically, mock, and pose as superior. Strike a pose, act as if you’re already superior, and offer little of substance or argument.
Its easy to see this as the tactics of the unintelligent and insecure, and they are that, but I think they are something much more significant than that.
The lack of interest in intelligent argument, and the resort to attack, is the behavior of those who want to win rather than understand.
Logical debate presupposes a potential willingness to admit defeat, if you are proved wrong. It presupposes a willingness to submit to objective rules. A disdain for argument, and a resort to mockery, indicates an unwillingness to submit to any rule. A disdain for logical argument also indicates a disinterest in objective reality, and a desire to impose a subjective vision.
It is the tactic of those who no longer wish to understand or see, but only to force. Everyone knows that logical argument does not persuade, and is merely a pastime of intellectuals. Nietzsche described logic as the tactic of the weak.
People interested in power, do not stoop to logic. They strike a pose. They act “as if” they are already in the superior position. They mock.
Intelligence is the weapon of the weak. Those who are after power use stupidity. Its been said power makes stupid, but stupidity may be the intelligence of power; that is to say, being stupid, power is actually being intelligent.
Of course you’ll like the “New Tang”, because after An Lushan, Tang was a pathetic shell of itself.
I think I can summarize utu’s main objection to you in a visual form:
https://dailystormer.su/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Screen-Shot-2018-09-25-at-8.29.25-PM-618×477.png
You’ll get less mockery the day that you actually practice any of those.
No, I think the wests immigration policy is suicidal and I don’t support mass immigration.
Libertarians who promote mass immigration aren’t taking into account our welfare system. You can’t have mass immigration plus mass socialism.
Later on tonight if I have time I will write up some interesting things I see China doing with its immigration policy.
Oh no, you’re just a conspiracy theorist!
Sorry, sorry, sorry, I thought I was talking to someone of a different calibre altogether 🙂 My apologies, and I shall bow out at this juncture.
Thanks for the conversation, though.
Seems like a lot of witches murdered their husbands. I suspect that the narrative regarding witches in Europe is pretty exaggerated.
Someone should write a tome entitled A Short, Unpozzed History of World that would serve as a counterpoint to HG Wells and countless others. There are really countless politico-historical narratives that need to be debunked. From Andalusia to Guernica in Spain, to countless ones in other places.
When exactly did he claim that?
Also, extremely off-topic, but I want to respond to a post that you made here (specifically post #37):
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/what-should-russia-do-in-belarus/#comment-4097570
I don’t think that Cohen is consciously being dishonest here.
If independence was allegedly so popular in Ukraine in March 1991, then why exactly was it not put on the ballot in Ukraine right then and there? And I don’t just mean in ex-Austrian Ukraine, but throughout all of Ukraine.
For that matter, if independence was allegedly so popular in Ukraine in March 1991, why not simply have Ukraine refuse to participate in the March 1991 Soviet referendum at all like the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia apparently did?
For that matter, if the sovereignty package for Ukraine was allegedly so good in March 1991, why exactly was there such vehement opposition to this package in Galicia and only tepid and lukewarm support for this package in Volhynia during this time? You can’t say that “Oh, Galicians also had independence on the ballot in March 1991” because that referendum–being localized to Galicia–was non-binding; thus, why not also have Galicians vote for Ukrainian sovereignty in March 1991 in the referendum that was actually binding? Also, in any case, Volhynians did not even have any non-binding referendum on independence in March 1991, and yet their support for this allegedly great Ukrainian sovereignty package was still significantly less in March 1991 than in the other, more pro-Russian parts of Ukraine.
Finally, I find it interesting that Ukrainians wanted to remain part of an economic union with the other USSR countries in March 1991 as opposed to, say, joining the European Union during this time. Why exactly was this the case?
Personally, I’m willing to have a more nuanced view on this topic: Specifically, I acknowledge that it’s possible that when Ukrainians voted for sovereignty in March 1991, some or even many of them might not have actually known what exactly the Ukrainian Parliament’s previous sovereignty resolution actually stated. (This Ukrainian sovereignty resolution wasn’t actually reproduced in full on the ballot in this referendum, was it?) I also acknowledge that the reason that a full independence referendum was not held in all of Ukraine in March 1991 might have been because such a referendum might have been perceived as being too risky back then. Finally, I acknowledge that different Ukrainians might have had different views about what exactly they voted for when they voted in favor of independence in December 1991. I think that Ukrainians’ opinions on independence in December 1991 would have been clearer had the text of this referendum explicitly stated that a Yes vote would result in full independence for Ukraine and in a complete break between Ukraine and the other ex-USSR countries. Likewise, I think that Ukrainians’ opinions on sovereignty in March 1991 would have been clearer had the text of the Ukrainian Parliament’s previous sovereignty resolution actually been on the referendum ballot in full so that everyone in this referendum could actually read this Ukrainian sovereignty resolution’s text in its entirety before they actually voted in the March 1991 Ukrainian referendum on Ukrainian sovereignty.
I suspect that any global-political organization would inevitably become woke sooner or later. IMO, the first mistake is trying to be a global organization, and not exclude anyone. At the very least, it would probably be a good idea to exclude countries that have diplomats that reliably misbehave – that flaunt their immunity. I think it might be a better idea, if only civilized countries met.
‘Mr Belloc objects to the Outline of History’ is not this, however it is a very funny response to HG Wells.
China is a pretty bleak and hopeless place right now that offers little cause for optimism, but lest anyone think this is “representative” of the Chinese spirit, we should all remember the wonderful and cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty era, managing to combine high culture with military and political power. It was perhaps Chinas Golden Age. All cultures repeat themselves, usually with a slight variation. Cultures are variations on a theme. I expect, when China breaks out of its current malaise, it will renew the spitit of the Tang Dybasty era, but this time with technology and all that might mean!
This was when the magnificent Chan sect of Buddhism was developed, in my view the high point of Buddhism.
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, especially for those in the upper classes.[252] Many outdoor sports and activities were enjoyed during the Tang, including archery,[253] hunting,[254] horse polo,[255] cuju (soccer),[256] cockfighting,[257] and even tug of war.[258] Government officials were granted vacations during their tenure in office.
It was also a great period for science and technology. I urge you all to read up on this wonderful wra, abd be inspired at what China may one day be again.
Well I don’t know, are we talking buffet?
What he is suggesting is china should perform a real holocaust on the jews.
It’s always sad when a non-Islamic place falls to Islam. It just becomes uglier and worse. Persia, Central Asia, Constantinople. So much beauty lost. It’s like Communism.
The people didn’t choose the questions that were on the ballots. They only voted for what they could. And they voted for the statement that provided de facto independence.
I don’t know about the other republics but Ukraine was still run by old Communist elites, who bent to popular pressure but didn’t break.
Because with full independence on the ballot, this was seen as the better choice.
Of course you can. Unless you think Galicians wanted to both preserve the USSR as it had always been (that is, reject the sovereignty referendum,) and be independent, they voted for what they wanted most, regardless of binding status. So they ignored de facto independence (sovereignty) and voted for de jure independence. Ukrainian nationalists were generally ecstatic about the 82% pro-sovereignty vote. It was really twisting things to describe this as a pro-USSR vote as Cohen did.
Very doubtful. Sovereignty was a huge deal in Ukraine at the time and everyone knew that it meant local laws would be supreme, and local Ukrainian army (no more Ukrainians being sent to Afghanistan or wherever on Moscow’s orders). These people weren’t Americans reading the ballot 30 years later. They were living through it.
Independence didn’t result in a full break, there was the Commonwealth of Independent States. But what else would independence mean if not full independence?
An eminent Japanese statesman of the 19th century, when surveying the wealth of the West and the prospects for Japan, remarked that japan would never become as wealthy, because they were too happy and content.
He was a wise man who saw deep into the springs of human motivation. He was also a mistaken wise man. Japan became both unhappy and wealthy.
In light of this remark, its not surprising that today’s Japanese, living during the stagnation of Japan, report themselves the happiest and most content generation since perhaps the encounter with the West. Nicknamed the “Satori generation” after the flash of Zen enlightenment, they have no ambition or desires, and are perfectly happy without them.
I often joke that if the Chinese truly want to become creative, they should eliminate the widespread availability of easy sex with prostitutes. The resulting sexual tension will lead to frustration, sublimation, then creativity.
The West, as we know, is the society of the Great Dissatisfaction. Just as the surest to make society liberal is to make it safe and prosperous, the surest way to engineer creativity is to make people dissatisfied. Take away their pleasures and make them feel inadequate. Make them unhappy.
Of course, here I am talking about Promethean creativity, that aims to transcend the human condition, not what might be called Dionysian creativity, which aims to embellish and beautify life, and is born not from lack, but exuberance.
Fortunately for you most modern scholars are anti-Christian and anti-European. Yet they still acknowledge mass Aztec brutality and that killing rates by hunter-gatherers are on the scale of World War II Europe. Aside from involuntary spread of infectious disease, Spanish impact on the New World (it’s deliberate impact) was on balance very positive.
Aztec human sacrifice scale was even greater, and longer-lasting. And Catholic Spain didn’t engage in witch-killing on a large scale. You lump all Abrahamic peoples or even Christians together; I’ll just defend traditional mainstream Christians (Catholic and Orthodox). These have in general improved the world and made it better. Puritans, not so much though they have been impressive in certain ways.
Up until the pandemic, it usually did mean a buffet. That’s what we did when my mom passed away. Most people can find something that they like at a buffet. I’m thinking that perhaps this wouldn’t be enough to entice you to show up at a funeral of somebody that you never knew? I guess it all depends on how hungry you might be? 🙂
The Irish have always had interesting wakes for their dearly departed. This is one of the funniest movies of all time, guaranteed to please:
https://youtu.be/6Rd4Xk0jBwU
Joke: What’ the difference between an Irish wake and an Irish wedding?
Answer: One less drunk.
https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/nasir-al-mulk-pink-mosque-large.jpg
https://blog.friendlyrentals.com/uploads/2018/05/PrImg_4792-650×423.jpg
https://www.voyage-tunisie.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/La-mosqu%C3%A9e-Ezzitouna-de-Tunis2-800×500.jpg
https://www.fodors.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Taj-Mahal-FAQ-hero-1.jpg
I could go on…
So, who chose the questions?
Yes, and the Ukrainian people–other than Galicians–elected those elites in free and fair elections in 1990, no?
Sure, full independence was the better choice, but again, the referendum on full independence was non-binding due to it only being limited to Galicia. So, why not also vote Yes in the binding referendum on (alleged) de facto independence–you know, the one that actually mattered?
Actually, I would argue that a Yes vote on full independence and a No vote on de facto independence would indeed produce the paradoxical result of both voting for full independence and voting to preserve the USSR as it already was.
And also, in any case, why did the nationalistic Volhynians (who didn’t have a full independence option on the ballot) vote to keep the USSR as it already was to a much greater extent than the more pro-Russian parts of Ukraine did?
Interesting interpretation. So, you reject the possibility that some or even many Ukrainians could have voted for de facto independence in March 1991 and for full independence in December 1991 as a bargaining chip to extract greater concessions from the center (Moscow)?
(Interestingly enough, this bargaining chip argument has also been proposed elsewhere. For instance, Ayesha Jalal argues that Muhammad Ali Jinnah might not have actually been serious in his demand for Pakistan and instead wanted to use this demand as a bargaining chip to get more concessions for Indian Muslims from the Indian center. I’ll let you decide just how much strength her arguments actually have.)
The Commonwealth of Independent States was largely symbolic, no–equivalent to the British Commonwealth? Yes, Russia tried to turn it into something much more than that through deeper integration, but Ukraine and possibly some other countries always vetoed these proposals. And in any case didn’t Ukraine refuse to ratify the CIS Charter or something like that?
But anyway, what I was actually thinking of here was declaring independence but then using independence as a way of extracting concessions from the center (Moscow) in exchange for a new union. Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan (but not Kazakhstan) also declared their secession from the Soviet Union between August and October 1991, but–unlike Ukraine–were nevertheless willing to negotiate in favor of a renewed union in some form all of the way up to December 1991, no?
For what it’s worth, I think that it might be prudent to find some Ukrainian polling from 1992-1994 (and the earlier, the better!) asking Ukrainians whether or not they regret the collapse and break-up of the Soviet Union. Let’s see whether the percentage of Ukrainians who express regret over this–especially very early on–is significantly higher than the 10% who voted No in Ukraine’s December 1991 independence referendum.
Modern scholars will say without the Spanish incursion there’d be no colonialism or African slavery.
Basically, that these incursions led to the growth of global white supremacy; basically, not only are they negative but any positive comments about them or pride would result in camps||
C u there, 🙂
This appears to be data from 2002 (so, after over a decade of economic misery), but it’s quite interesting that a majority of voters in Southern and Eastern Ukraine in 2002 would have opposed Ukrainian independence had they been allowed to vote again on this topic, as would have over one-third of voters in Central Ukraine:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Cleft_Countries/el8ZBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=ukraine+independence+south+east+58+42&pg=PA105&printsec=frontcover
Of course, the people in that poll–especially from the more pro-Russian regions of Ukraine–also might have been misremembering how some of them actually voted in the December 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum.
Oy Vey!
Goldman about Trump and the failure to make America great again:
https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/donald-trump-the-wizard-of-wuz/
Well something like piano sales, doesn’t indicate China will suddenly produce a generation of Dave Brubecks. (Who has to mentioned as his 100th anniversary was on Saturday).
But it is positive indication that will be music connoisseurship in China, which is perhaps some necessary, if not sufficient, condition for a society which will produce creative pianists.
In terms of piano sales. China is the second largest market, but this is of course partly just a result of having the largest population. Per capita Japanese still buy almost ten times more new pianos than China. Similarly, USA is buying 5 times more new pianos per capita than China.
But the high ratio of acoustic pianos in the Chinese buy, and the fact it is growing in China (while falls in the rest of the world) – some promising indicators.
For your confused sake, Apollonian is more akin to the opposite of Dionysian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian
I tend to think myself as Apollonian.
The Communist-era rulers.
The 1990 elections have been accurately described as “semi-free.” They also occurred during the course of the Communists’ fall in popularity but before that fall had accelerated.
Again, are you implying Galicians wanted to preserve the USSR in its current form by not voting for the binding question? That would be silly. With independence on the ballot, “binding” or not, mere de facto independence was rejected as not being good enough.
Do you have figures? I’d guess some small % of hardcore anti-Soviets would have boycotted rather than take part in any vote organized by a state that they despised, even a vote in favor of de facto independence.
I doubt many voters choose based on being bargaining chips, but I suppose it is possible that some of the local Communists who organized the election may have done so with that strategy in mind.
I’m surprised it was only 1/3 in Central Ukraine. Right after the 90s nightmare I’d suspect at least half of Central Ukrainians regretted independence. The difference between such people in Central Ukraine and the ones in the East is that the Central Ukrainians felt that it was too late to go back, that the only way forward was through and with Europe.
For practicing music at home, a digital piano is a great thing – but possibly the child would need access to good acoustic pianos in their school, before they really fall in love with piano music.
As a child I had a digital piano in my room, and for several years my teacher used to actually teach me on that. But I remember I only really enjoyed playing with the acoustic pianos in my grandparents’ and in my school. Acoustic pianos usually do allow creation of much more complex sounds.
Digital pianos are great as a convenience practicing (especially with headphones), but it’s not going to make real pianos unemployed.
Digital pianos are improving, although the manufacturers (here is somewhere we can criticize Japanese) are definitely lazy in terms of upgrading their onboard sounds.
There is potentiality for very realistic digital instruments. VSTs like Ravenscroft and Pianoteq 6 and above software, can be realistic and complex already. But the internal sounds on the digital piano are usually quite far behind, and just acceptable at best, and perhaps won’t make you fall in love with music if you don’t also have access to real pianos (e.g. at school).
For me, most important is sound of the samples (or more recently piano modelling), and then the speakers and amplication (if you don’t just play on headphones).
Surely, the action of the keys is also important for many people, and a bad one will make you hate your keyboard quite soon.
I agree that an acceptable (for many people) keyboard action is now cheaper than ever. For example, Yamaha P-515 is quite pleasant in terms of keyboard action.
But to recreate the sound of an acoustic piano, you would need to pay also for a VST like Pianoteq, and to upgrade the speakers (i.e. studio monitors). So in the end, it could cost $2000 and look a bit messy. And then end result might be almost as musically enjoyable as a (i.e. $2000-$3000) acoustic upright piano, with advantage you can play on keyboards, record yourself, use different VST software, etc.
Of course, I’m intimately familiar with it, that was my entire point.
The Epicureans did not teach a lack of free will. The atoms which are governed by laws, which in turn govern behaviour, can swerve from their usual path. Although, from the surviving writings it is not quite clear what may cause the swerve.
Patriotism in the sense that people are supporting their country and traditions – this can be a sign that the person has a “prosocial” attitude and supports his neighbours. It can also be a sign of prosocial conformism, which usually indicates a better citizen, and people should can complimented for this.*
Conversely, people who would hate their own country, without some legitimate reason or experience to do that – it’s often a sign of an antisocial person, in conflict with society (here is probably overrepresented orientation among dissidents that obsessively criticize their home country – and why dissidents can be sometimes selecting for a certain unpleasant type of people).
So, sure, a desire to support your country and its traditions, can be a sign of maturity.
But a teenage boy nationalism, where you project your identity imaginatively onto great battles (in reality, more like bloody hell) of the past – or start arguing about how your country’s dog, is stronger than another country’s dog. Here is usually something almost masturbatory, or in the most sympathetic interpretation, we might say: something like a “peter pan” desire to keep alive playground emotions and certain escapisms.
Our ancestors (if you count a little) before they were such tribes of humans, were nonhumans.
There is something more mystical about all of it, but rather in a disorientating way.
We descended from “Purgatorius”, who looked like below. This my glorious ancestor – some kind of squirrel.
https://i.imgur.com/dO8vumu.jpg
It reminds me of how Socrates (in Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus) was mocking peoples’ pride in their ancestors. Yet he didn’t even have access to the knowledge that our ancestors looked like a squirrel
“Hearing of enormous landed proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to think of the whole earth; and when they sing the praises of family, and say that someone is a gentleman because he can show seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that their sentiments only betray a dull and narrow vision in those who utter them, and who are not educated enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man has had thousands and ten thousands of progenitors, and among them have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and barbarians, innumerable.” https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Theaetetus
What feels more genuine, as opposed to something arbitrarily selected, is the place of your childhood, your classmates of your youth, the trees and landscapes in which you first encounter the world, and the society at a particular of history into which you soul land, and your consciousness has grown. Schopenhauer implied that we our soul has somehow chosen the time and place of our birth.
For people from Ancient Greek city states, these places could match perfectly to their national identity. However, in the modern world, if you live in a very large country, then these deeper emotions and connections to your home, match – to the homecity, and not to random parts of a country which might have a very different atmosphere.
Newgrange in Ireland and Tumulus de Dessignac in France are absolutely amazing.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumulus_de_Dissignac
But surprisingly, it is further North that the most incredible religious complex of the Megalithic Culture lied:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/01/02/article-2081254-0F5181EF00000578-956_308x185.jpg
https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=17401
These people truly mastered the work of the stone: from large edifices to small objects.
http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/Images/countries/Scottish%20pics/stoneball.jpg
And
http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/Images/countries/Scottish%20pics/stoneballtowie.jpg
We can call them primitive, but they were certainly very industrious and knowledgeable.
My comments were aimed at the beginner market. No parent (unless they’re a pianist) is going to be able to reliably distinguish sound quality between, say, a P90 and a P515 (which is way beyond entry level). I know this because I was scouting around for an instrument this year, looking to begin playing again after a looong layoff, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good even entry level pianos sounded and felt.
I had a friend when I was a kid who claimed he could cheat fate, his argument being that if it was his fate to be a doctor, he could just become a dentist. I replied that being a dentist would then have been his real fate, which is not something a person could know beforehand anyway. The same thing applies to your characterization of the Epicurean position. What does it matter if they “swerve,” since no one knew what their “usual path” would have been anyway? To ours eyes, it’s indistinguishable.
Given that the two images I have linked don’t open, here is a link that allows to see the objects I have marveled about:
http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/scotlandballs.htm
Good luck on playing again.
Lol that sounds like my parents when I was a child. But after a certain amount of hours, a musical child might perhaps fall in love with a good acoustic piano, as it produces complicated sounds, very responsively. I’m not fussy about acoustic pianos even – many of them have an inspiring character even when they are bad piano.
I’m more aspiring to “amateur composer” than aspiring to “amateur pianist” though, so I’m not usually so fussy about piano performance, as about being inspired by sounds.
If you only have one of those though. I think that after a certain number of hours, you could find that the sound is lacking complexity (aside from the issue of speakers and amplification – real pianos are also a lot louder than a cheap digital piano).
At the beginning you might be happy that digital piano plays the notes, in tune, and with a pleasant sound. But your brain might soon adapt to the samples (which onboard are often only containing few hundred megabytes of information), and find the sound becomes too predictable.
I also don’t have a acoustic piano, so have for years being confronting this problem. I find that with keyboards (even with complex sounds from VST) I probably practice far less than I would with a good acoustic piano. I have access to an acoustic piano at a practice (which is often out of tune).
LOL
Never mind then.
It again seems like you’re misunderstanding me.
I never expected let alone cared about whether Serb clerics would have been able to control the affairs of Orthodox Christians in Greece, Anatolia, Middle East or anywhere else besides Serb ethnic areas. I don’t think any Serb really has a problem or cares about Greek clerics running Orthodox Churches in those other areas.
My problem was with the fact that Greek Phanariotes in the Ottoman Empire, were given/took over control, of the Serbian Orthodox Church and harmed the wellbeing of Serbs in the Ottoman Empire.
It’s true that Serbs were an agricultural people, although Serbs were practically split between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empire for many centuries. That’s why I always get a bit annoyed whenever I hear “we were 500 years under the Turks” (it’s only partly true) because it doesn’t capture the much more complex and unpleasant reality of being a smaller nation stuck between two large and powerful empires for hundreds of years (always being in the middle of their wars where your towns and villages will be inevitably sacked and burned randomly and arbitrarily by both sides at some point or another). The Habsburg Empire was obviously usually better for Serbs because Habsburg Emperors granted them religious, ethnic, economic and other rights in return for Serbs giving useful and important service as frontiersmen and soldiers on the Habsburg Empire’s borders with the Ottoman Empire. A whole bunch of poison pills came from the Habsburg Empire though, in the form of violating Serb national rights during peace with the Ottomans (when the role of Serbs as vitally important frontiersmen became much less important), enforcing Roman Catholicism, Uniatism, serfdom to Croat-Magyar nobles, Magyarization, Croatization, Illyrianism/Yugoslavianism, and so on, although that is a different story. Still, at the start of the 19th century, a whole bunch of Serbs in the Habsburg Empire in the form of administrative, political and religious leaders, with obviously soldiers and supplies, served as a welcome form of help and contribution to the Serbian Uprisings and development of the Principality of Serbia.
Russia is mortally under siege and encircled by USA/NATO. It’s not good to have unrealistically high expectations of Russia because then one can get easily disillusioned.
Dark clouds are coming for the world and especially Russia (it will be no.1 on the firing line similar to how Iran/Middle East are right now under “maximum pressure”) in the likely imminent ascent of the Joe Biden presidency (and no, Biden Administration won’t do shit about Turkey, in fact Turkey is likely going to make itself very useful against Russia and Serbia in the next few years).
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/dark-clouds-ahead/
https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/10/25/biden-bosnia-kosovo-serbia/
Expect “wonderful” things like Ukraine being actively armed and supported to reconquer the Donbass (to the delight of Ukrops like Mr Hack), efforts and possibly a war (if Serbs resist strongly enough) to eliminate Republika Srpska and annex Bosnia, then Serbia, into NATO to transform the Balkans into a 100% Islamic shithole inhospitable for Christians artificially enabled by USA/NATO, and so on …
My personal hopes actually rest more with China (not just it’s direct ties with Serbia, but the challenges it poses to the USA Empire globally) than with Russia at this point (Russia has done about everything it possibly can by now to help Serbia, and it can’t really do much more for the foreseeable future). The moment that China physically delivers it’s FK-3/KS-1 systems to Serbia (hopefully they’ll do this ASAP, ideally before 2oth/21st January), which are Chinese equivalents of Russian S-300’s/S-400’s, Serbia’s position will be good enough to resist anything Biden’s administration may try because no one with such weapons systems has ever been militarily invaded by the USA at all, let alone successfully (that’s why a whole bunch of other tactics are then necessary to pursue). Vucic can then pursue diplomacy, negotiations and engage in various kinds of symbolic cucking (if necessary, like the thing in Washington already, although it’s very uncertain what will actually happen with that) to simply drag through and allow Serbs and Serbia to survive this upcoming difficult and precarious time period. Of course, the worst case scenarios could always happen regardless, but a moderate-high level of geopolitical uncertainty is simply standard for Serbia and Serbs as a nation to endure …
I settled on a Kawaii ES8, and you’re not wrong in your comments about sound. Still, my main objective was to grow accustomed to simply playing the notes again, so I figured if I manage to stick with it – a big if with me, my mind changes like the wind – I can always upgrade to a better sounding model later. I started at 8yo, but I was forced into it by my parents and spent the first seven or so years resenting it mightily; then I actually began to enjoy it, but quit a few years later – see my earlier comment about mind changing like the wind lol. I’m still extremely rusty. Playing p or pp at any fast tempo is an exercise in pure frustration, but a ‘fun’ kind of frustration too.
Нигга плииз.
No time to reply to all this now, just noting that I’ve read your comments.
Thanks. People often forget that. Vast majority of stuff humans argue about is irrelevant garbage.
Your great grandma the tree rat survived a teraton asteroid impact that wiped out majority of life on this planet. Compared to that, GDP, IQ, immigration, income inequality, WW3, robots and other bullshit is utterly material and inconsequential.
Just like we don’t really care what was the exact nut distribution in the tree rat domains, or how the tree rats traded nuts between forests, of if some tree rats had higher IQ than others.
The only thing that mattered was that after the impact some tree rats survived, found some food, and partners to breed with, thus carrying out the genetic lines that became us. This is the only universal principle that applies.
We literally have archaeological towers of skulls from Mexico. European colonists and imperialists were fairly scrupulous in their recordings of the customs of the many natives they came across. Post-colonial efforts to create new narratives have proven false time and time again.
Facts don’t matter in politics you naive cretin||
And why exactly were they nice enough to allow an independence question in Galicia?
Interesting. In any case, though, they were still sufficiently free for local nationalists to win them in the Baltics, Moldova, Armenia, and Georgia, no?
Because the terms of the Ukrainian parliament’s sovereignty declaration would have been the negotiating position of the Ukrainian SSR at the start of negotiations with the center (Moscow) over a new union treaty. However, these terms would not have necessarily been the negotiating position of the Ukrainian SSR at the end of these negotiations; in other words, there might have needed to be some give and take in these negotiations–and of course Moscow could use the threat of force to try to get the Ukrainians to back away from some of their more extreme demands. It’s worth noting that when the 1991 August coup attempt occurred in Moscow, Kravchuk, unlike Yeltsin, does not actually appear to have actively opposed this coup–presumably knowing that Ukrainians would be unwilling to actively militarily fight the coup plotters in the event that the coup plotters would have succeeded in taking control of Moscow and the Russian SFSR.
That I agree with! But please tell me how exactly the Soviet Union would have reacted if the Ukrainian SSR would have voted No to a new Union Treaty by a 51-49 margin, with Galician pro-independence voters providing the decisive margin for the No side? Was Ukraine going to get full independence right then and there even though only Galicia would have actually voted for this?
Here you go:
https://www.electoralgeography.com/new/en/countries/f/ukraine-referendum-on-the-preservation-of-the-ussr-1991.html
It’s too bad that we don’t have voter turnout percentages by oblast for the Ukrainian SSR for this referendum–at least not on that specific website.
Do you think that most of the Muslims who supported Pakistan in the 1940s were likewise serious about separatism as opposed to preferring a stronger and better position for Muslims in a united India?
Was the 1990s nightmare not foreseeable ahead of time? If not, why not?
Anyway, the 1990s nightmare was a reason to support and put Rukh in charge of Ukraine rather than putting ex-Communists in charge of Ukraine. I really don’t like western Ukrainians’ Bandera-worship (though Russians also have idiotic Lenin-worship and Stalin-worship), but they might have been able to govern Ukraine better than ex-Sovoks actually did in real life. At the very least, western Ukrainians learned something about good government from 150 years of Hapsburg rule.
This 21st century version of the Yellow Terror is downright retarded. We’re scared of the Chinese because of 5G now? Tech companies are mostly parasites who produce junk geared towards frivolous consumption and rely on freebies from the military industrial complex. I wish the Chinese were taking over the tech industry. Sadly it will not happen.
The educational system is the leading cause of dysgenic breeding patterns. Society needs less investment in education.
You’re posting on a message board.
Well, then it’s pretty consequential that we live in a society slowly going extinct with 1.5 TFR and a culture glorifying extinction and degeneracy.
shit-
*
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Gandhara_Buddha_%28tnm%29.jpeg
When ancient Hellenes made first Buddha statues more than 2000 years ago, they modelled them on the fashion of Apollon. Buddha after all is related to the solar deities and he uses his reason and will in taming of our chaotic reality. We are an Apollonian religion, even our mildly antinomian practices are designed so that we could gain control over malevolent and chaotic forces. We as religion go further and beyond than Nietzsche could ever even dream of. Yes he was correct, reality is empty of meaning, empty of values, but unlike nihilists and Nietzschean egoists, Buddha understood that we can impose our own will unto this emptiness and create the most perfect truth and impose that truth on reality, so that it would become true by our own deeds! That we can perfect our will and by perfecting our will we perfect the means to control the chaos that surrounds us.
To Ano4
Om Mani Padme Hum
Om Jewel In Lotus Hum
Om Bodhicitta In Sunyata Hum
Om Will/Means In Emptiness Hum
That Ano4 is the profound meaning of our blessed mantra! Though everything is empty, we the subjects, and the external objects, we can create the most perfect reality from emptiness, achieve the most highest truth, and because things are empty, there is no most highest truth and most perfect reality! A sky without limits, a space without constraints! Beyond, beyond, further beyond, beyond all! Forever and ever!
Until you meet the Sword||
https://www.manglacharan.com/post/guru-panth-and-guru-granth-sri-sarbloh-guru-granth-sahib
https://twitter.com/khalsasupremacy/status/1330232276689555457
This is your history, too.
It is something typical of certain classes of English people and has been getting increasingly mainstream; there are those comments by George Orwell from the 1930s about left-wing British intellectuals being more ready to rob a poor box than stand up during the national anthem and it seems to have grown from there. Lately it looks like they have got into the habit of doing it so much that they believe most of what they are saying and have become anti-patriotic, which is not sensible.
What about Arab slave trade? They dealt almost all of their history with millions of slaves, both black and white, and unlike Europeans, who werent any epitomes of humanity when dealing with the slaves, they often castrated their slaves, and I even read that sometimes eunuchs were purposefully disfigured or scarred that they were more hideous in Arabia and Iran. Im not sure anymore where I read that, probably from some book of the Lebanese British historian Albert Hourani, who by the way was highly sympathetic towards the Arab nationalism.
Where is Jatt Arya, our funny chad Sikh and who you are impostor? Because before we had cool Sikh stories, but now its like there is some whiny intersectional nigger posting instead. Lately you just whine about whites, colonialism, race, white supremacy, white fragility, and on and on.
Did you know that genetically Punjabis are closest of all Indians to Europeans?
Even British thought that Punjabis and Rajputs are racially Aryan and superior in comparison to other Indian ethnic groups.
https://i.redd.it/6n28dj1msaby.jpg
The most common male lineage haplogroup among the Punjabis is R1a1a, which is VERY, VERY common among the Slavs.
So you have now a choice, to be a real Aryan guy or some weird whining pajeet wimp with a racial inferiority complex?
I get it, you want to use race discourse as a weapon against Anglos, I get it, but thats not the Dharmic way, Dharma is not subversive nor is it a poison. Dharma is the greatest weapon, in honest fight it can beat everything, and by virtuous example Dharma can transform everyone.
https://editorial01.shutterstock.com/wm-preview-1500/6526722a/1ed4c65f/sacred-mandalas-berkeley-usa-shutterstock-editorial-6526722a.jpg
No sword can survive against VAJRA, the divine thunderbolt weapon of Indra, we Buddhists believe that Bodhicitta or the tamed and awakened mind is the Vajra, a most supreme weapon that there is, such weapon can pierce through every material, and no weapon or shield can endure before its might!
https://cdn.exoticindia.com/buddha/ti65.jpg
I find that Americans abroad (at least the ones who I have met) are much more critical of their country than British people.
Did you read the article? It’s more about why America cannot be made great again than China. Gildman is far from being a China-hater. Quite the opposite, he always points towards these attitudes being deluded.
Lel.
https://bharatkarnad.com/2020/11/15/modi-seems-likely-to-give-ground-in-ladakh/
Altan, a half million Sikhs have Delhi surrounded, scroll up for stories.
Im not posting CRT because I like it or care for it, it’s in “vogue” the new cool thing on the block,
You can’t avoid it for long.
Exposure builds immunity||
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/640459736919048202/785828845126811678/Shastars1.jpg
Our Sikh friend does not believe in abstract notions. He is more adept at analyzing the material and self evident. Sword (or rather kirpan) worship is the highest level of abstraction he could possibly reach. But as the saying goes: who comes by the sword does by the sword. Also: God is not found in (brute) force, but in (ethical) Truth. And the man who used both these expressions, while talking to his soldiers, was himself an embodiment of warrior virtues: a hero, a ruler and a Saint.
https://aria-art.ru/0/A/Aleksandr%20Nevskij/5.jpg
This is what makes a people superior: the ability to produce higher insight and defend it against brute force. Just getting more gibs through the sword does not free you from life and death.
Only among the higher caste. Our Sikh friend being a Jatt makes this Y haplogroup attribution unlikely. Before becoming Sikh, the Jatts were basically Chudra, perhaps Vaishya for some of them. BTW it shows in his comments: a very strong attachment to coarse material aspects of Sikh tradition, no respect at all towards the subtle and spiritual aspects of his Faith.
The Virgin People’s Republic of China territorial claims
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/CHN_orthographic.svg/440px-CHN_orthographic.svg.png
Versus
The Chad Republic of China territorial claims
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/Republic_of_China_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg/500px-Republic_of_China_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg.png
I remember what was predicted in case of 3 degree global warming was that the Amazon would turn into a semi-arid savannah, the Sahara would move northwards, so the Sahel would become wetter while Spain and Sicily and Southern Italy would turn into a desert, and China and Northern India would largely dry up because the Himalayan glaciers would melt, and Northern China will largely dry up.
There were Nath Sadhus called Sastra-Dharis who were militant warrior Yogins, and who fought against Muslims.
Nathas by the way are one of the few sects that have genuine Hindu-Buddhist syncretic origins, though nowadays they are definitely more Hindu.
Even pierce through the fabric of reality!
US signed deal with ALIEN Galactic Federation to experiment on humans, claims Israeli ex military space chief in bizarre interview
https://www.rt.com/news/508962-israel-space-chief-alien-federation/
Eshed acknowledged that his claims, which he offered with no evidence, might appear outlandish, but said he believes humanity will gradually come to accept them as true, and that some people may already have seen the light.
“If I came up with what I was saying five years ago today, I would have been hospitalized,” he said. “Until today, every place that I approached in the academy with this, they said, the guy has lost his mind.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/04/jesus-gay-man-codices
We’re not equals, and you’re a slave.
One protects the other, you’re a faggy imbecile.
Shastra Dhari just means one who bears arm||
https://www.shastarvidiya.org/img/history_natha_sadhus_03.png
https://www.shastarvidiya.org/img/history_natha_sadhus_02.png
Guru Nanak Dev Ji meeting Baba Gorakh Nath
Current head of Nath Mutt, Yogi AdityaNath is UP CM.
Hindus are shadow of self, they attack own street power & map Dharma onto secular democracy||
:/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhcD2fhU0AUvIwY.jpg
Since abstraction is higher than material reality, what comes out of my dick will be your son cuck (Ano4)
Funny that you wrote about this. It actually would be the Occam’s Razor explanation for a lot of things.
Looking at what I think are Indian/Asian religious patterns exemplifies the difference between them and us. Whether it is Italian Renaissance or Palaiologan Byzantine art, there is almost always a striving for the impossible whereas Indian/Asian art is intricate and somewhat pleasing to the eye but ultimately mundane and trivial.
I’m only taking your Brahmanical bs to its logical conclusion..
You literally have no concept of politics & religion being akin,
You feel safe||
That pretty much determines your outlook,
Anyway any faggy bs insulting warrior’s death is automatically dq’d.
You’re a christcuck,
https://twitter.com/_balorbirugderc/status/1332114565413412871?s=21
Go do ur thing|| 🙂
In Galicia the anti-Communist sentiment existed earlier and overcame the semi-free conditions such that the independence question, barred in the rest of the country, was placed on the ballot by local authorities.
I don’t know details about other republics. In Ukrainian hardliners had taken over and purged others in the 1970, so that the place was more of a hardliners stringing in the 80s.
A lot of rather wild speculations about voter motivations. Reality was much simpler: people were given the option of voting for de facto independence and they overwhelmingly did so.
Kravchuk has been a Communist insider.
As is very clear from the final number in your link, your link shows numbers for the first question and not for the sovereignty question. So it’s irrelevant for the purposes of our discussion.
I did not know enough about Pakistan to speculate. I know enough about Ukraine to know that your implications (as Cohen’s) are rather bizarre.
Why would it be foreseeable, given that transition from Communism had not yet occurred anywhere?
Western Ukraine has been the best managed part of Ukraine since independence. But it is only 10% of the country and has not been able to impose its politicians and political culture on the entire country so it was not free of overall 1990s debacle.
If Galicia had been its own independent country in 1990 it probably would have joined the EU quickly like the others Central European countries did, and by now would have been about as prosperous as other small Central European countries such as Slovakia, maybe even more so (Lviv has a more educated workforce and Galicia would have been a gas exporter). But Galicians, like Kharkivites, prefer to be in their country Ukraine even if doing so is not always in their own economic interests. There has been no significant anti-Ukrainian separatist movement in Galicia.
Now we know where they get those IQ test questions: “If all Fugs are Yoms, and all Razzies are Bloops…”
Sire, this is a Wendy’s.
Quite inspirational.
There is a beauty in the notion of calming the chaos, isn’t it? I am reminded of the Hermetic notion of the external universe as a reflection of the internal universe – as above so below, as within so without – and so through our transmutation into our best selves, so we can come to bring about the best world around us, and I’ve always thought that to be true secret of the alchemist’s art in refining the pure from the dross.
You will notice that the resentment-ridden, anti-white sicko only mentioned African slavery, but of course even a ‘racist’ like me can allow that slavery is slavery and that’s it’s horrible and wrong. His anti-whitism inures him the suffering of over a million Europeans enslaved by Arab raiders, and the terror that coastal southern European communities lived in for centuries of Arab raiding parties.
One of my collaborators (a Canadian) told me that many Americans abroad pretend to be Canadians to avoid being blamed for the actions of the US government. There are many countries where it is better (sometimes even safer) to say that you are a Russian than an American.
According to Bergier this has also been Fulcanelli’s take on the matter.
Somehow they failed to record virtually total genocide of indigenous peoples in North America. More people were killed by bullets and deliberately spread disease or starved to death then Aztecs and Maya combined managed to kill during centuries of their rule.
Barbary pirates were Arabized Berbers led by Turks. Calling them Arabs is a misnomer.
Other than that I agree with your comment. Slavery is slavery, whether of Blacks or Whites or Chinese. BTW, the words slave in english and esclave in french are directly derived from the Slovene and Sklaviny ethnonym.
But you probably knew it.
Perhaps “US signed deal with ALIEN Galactic Federation” is a metaphor for America’s relation with Jews and Israel and a message to China and Russia that they have not been offered a similar deal by the ALIEN Galactic Federation.
The earliest description of a “small gray” Alien was given in the novel “Red Star” by Bogdanov Malinovsky written after 1905 (attempted) Russisb revolution and published around 1908. The main character is contacted by an Allien and taken on a ride in a space ship to this Alien’s home planet which the main character thinks is Mars (hence the title of the book).
The space ship is moved by “by energy of decay of matter” (published in 1908!). Aliens live in a collectivist society where private property has been erased long ago and where everything is planned and controlled by computers (published in 1908!). The Aliens are nearly completely genderless (published in 1908!).
Now have a look at current societal trends…
Ah before I forget, Bogdanov Malinovsky competed with Lenin for the leadership of the Bolsheviks. He was the one who suggested the red star as a symbol of the Communist movement.
When the revolution succeeded, he abandoned active politics and concentrated on scientific work
I always wondered how did this come about? Not from Latin. Slave in Greek is δούλος and σκλάβος. Which came first and what is the etymology of σκλάβος? The oldest Greek text where σκλάβος was used?
I believe that one beef-eater would be victorious over a hundred beef-abstainers, even if that one beef-eater got his nourishment from the slimey, reprocessed concoction, known as a Big Mac, which is probably only 10% beef, and 90% hog entrails.
If my memory serves me well the first to mention Sklavins was Jordanes in his Getica, written around mid-sixth century AD. He also wrote about Antes in conjunction with Sklavins. IFAIK the first to mention Antes was Tacitus. Procopius also wrote about Slavs and Antes in the six century, but I do not think he mentioned Sklavins.
They not only recorded but often exaggerated scales of European atrocities:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend_(Spain)
Usual nonsense. Deaths from disease were overwhelmingly non deliberate in nature and typically preceded first contact. Even the infamous and isolated smallpox blanket case at Fort Erie was noneffective. That leaves “killing by bullets,” which may have been done by Natives to other Natives to a greater extent than by Europeans upon natives. The typical pattern was that the first tribe to get guns would use them to settle scores against their longstanding enemy tribes. You dehumanize natives when you deny them their human warlike nature and portray them merely as these totally peaceful victims.
The conservative estimate of people sacrificed by Aztecs is about 10,000 per year (estimates go as high as 100,000). That is, 100,000 people harvested for sacrifice over 10 years, a million total over 100 years until the horrified Spaniards ended this practice and the demon-worship underlying it. There is a reason why, when the small Spanish force arrived to erase the Aztecs, it was joined by large numbers of natives.
In contrast, the dreaded Spanish Inquisition totaled some 6,000 victims over its 300 year application.
There may have been a few naive academic types that actually believe that, but they would be wrong.
Laughlin Currie (of the US delegation) was one example–there is compelling evidence he was a Soviet spy:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44638338?seq=8#metadata_info_tab_contents
The UN had a one world government anti-individual liberty agenda from day one.
The best way to finish off this abomination would be to move its HQ to Zimbabwe–I am sure the locals would be happy to “take care of business”.
Solid points, still the thrust of AnonTN’s comment is solid. He rightly highlights the dastardly behavior of the western expansionists. This can most clearly be seen by contrasting it with Russian behavior, which never encroached upon any people or territory not rightfully its own.
We all know which road is paved with good intentions, don’t we?
Been thinking about the theater – traditionally, it is said to have a lot of superstitions.
I’ve always dismissed this as being a bit of humor in the face of stage fright, but lately I’ve been wondering if this view is wrong. Maybe, it is explained by the natural personality characteristics of actors – their political compasses, and that they really are a naturally superstitious lot.
It’s been noted how many actors or creative people seem to have a leftward bent. It is also been observed how modern political discourse is dominated by the Left’s belief in invisible forces, in hexes, such as it is common for primitive Africans to believe in.
Perhaps, in olden times, they worked theses superstitions into the stories they told – like ghosts, witches, and elves – and this helped amuse people and make them a success. Now, they are working their new superstition into stories: racism, only it is not as amusing.
Give the Peruvians a break. Their Catholicism cannot be separated from worship of the Sun God. The Indian and mixed part of the population are not exactly Christian.
On my visit to Peru I learned two things:
1. Indigenous people resent being called Indians. They rightly point out that they have nothing to do with India and cannot be held responsible for the stupidity of Columbus and many other European explorers. Peruvians say that they should be called Quechua people (that’s their prevailing language), or each tribe should be called by its name.
2. As compared to Mexico, there is remarkably little European blood in the population. In Cusco and in Amazonia ~98% of the people look indigenous, and even in Lima no more than 10% show any European ancestry in their phenotype.
Maybe subjective preferences and cultural biases are at work here?
Personally I have enjoyed both eastern and western spiritual art, but I admit that Roman and Hellenic art is often superb. But Orthodox icons have often been too rigid and formulaic for my taste. Still I wouldnt egoistically or chauvinistically claim that they are ultimately trivial or something, even though I am not at all inspired by them.
Mundane is okay point, for Christian everything non relating to the Christian religion is mundane, so its just natural that these pieces of art are mundane from your viewpoint. And so it should be, lest you not lose the cohesion of your faith.
https://soonyata.home.xs4all.nl/Soruba%20samadhi/Living%20rainbow%20body%20of%20great%20transference.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/bd/bc/5fbdbcdcf8367587ce29c4bf9f80f0c5.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/White_Tara.jpg
Which reminds me of a question I had for AltanBakshi or Ano4:
When did our ancestors acquire the capability of experiencing Nirvana, escaping the cycle of life and death and all that?
Could Neanderthals (who were able to interbreed with homo sapiens sapiens and had a bigger brain that ours) potentially reach those goals? And homo erectus (whose most evolved types appear to have also interbred with us)? Pithecanthropi?
In other words, when did exactly the “Nirvana-capable” gen mutation/s take place? Is any research being conducted to identify this gen (or genes)? If we had to wait for evolution to produce a Nirvana-capable species, then there MUST be a gene or collection of genes that make it possible.
And what if natural selection or environmental factors had never produced this mutation? Would all living creatures be condemned to exist in the fateful never ending cycle?
I don’t think I can ask the Christian commenters here a comparable question about heaven because their Holly Books spell the answer clearly for them. Those Christians who continue to take the Old Testament seriously cannot possibly accept evolution. And those who are able to see that the OT is just a collection of incoherent fables but somehow manage to believe in the rest of the Christian canon, must think that salvation is only possible through Christ so all those billions of creatures, human or not, who didn’t manage to be born before Jesus Christ (or at least Moses) must have ended up in hell.
So propensity for ignorant mockery can be added to dishonesty, as a list of your traits.
This theory (red star = Mars) is still being seriously discussed:
Так почему все-таки на советском гербе изображена планета Марс?
Antarctica!!! What kind of crazy Indian nationalist made that map?!
But, in all seriousness, shouldn’t India be red? Are we going to ignore the history of conquest there? And, isn’t it implicit, as things currently stand, that Muslims will take over India? India was at least 15.5% Abramhamic in 2001. According to some 2018 numbers that I’ve seen that went up to over 20.0%. In another 10 years, it will probably converge with SK rates, only SK has a more indigenous flavor to their churches.
Hard to give definite answer. The problem with animals is that its hard for them to understand causality, yes they can understand simple things, they feel passion and attachment, aversion and so on, but its not like they can put together thoughts and analyze their situation.
When such beings arise who are capable of analysis and have capacity for logical thought, then there is always a chance that in suitable circumstances some of them can achieve the state of Nirvana.
I dont know, even most humans are not capable of enlightenment, but its not like we have any magical obstacles or objections against them reaching the Nirvana. In Buddhism there is concept of so called “central lands.” Where there are laws and people can freely practice their religion, in other words there is somekind of civilization. Its not maybe impossible, but its very rare that Buddhas appear in lands that are tribal and chaotic.
Is there a specific gene that makes us to desire something, or is there a specific gene that makes us to avert non pleasant things?
You try too hard, it seems that the rigid and constrained catholicism of your youth has just transformed into rigid and constrained form of atheism.
Do you mean that without Buddhism life would have continued forever on this planet? Strange presupposition.
Funnily Buddhists are already asking much more complicated questions than this stuff.
There is discussion among us if artificial intelligence could achieve Nirvana.
Here is what H.H. Dalai Lama says on the topic: https://sanjindumisic.com/dalai-lama-on-reincarnation-and-artificial-intelligence/
They resent being called Indios because it’s a term of racial disparagement, not because of Spaniards’ geographical errors. Of course, they’re not going to tell you that, probably because they don’t like being reminded of it themselves, hence the Columbus cover story.
So Holocaust was inevitable and Nazis didnt have free will? Also if I understand you correctly the Holocaust was karmically predetermined?
Can something be necessarily non-existent? I believe so
I think this sub-thread illustrates the cause of problems Europeans have dig themselves into (and it started already in Roman Empire).
We simply are not content with doing our own business but for some reason want to spread universalist values at the side. I understand why one may see colonizing America as a good thing, because it spread our kind to other continent and brought huge fortunes back home. But justifying it because it ended human sacrifice by Aztecs? Why should it concern us? Why should we care how other people and civilizations are behaving? In the rare occasions when it really is our concern (like slave raids in med) the problem can usually solved by military means without attaching any soft “values” to it.
This universalism has now IMHO came home to roost. Europe has largely exhausted barbarian hordes to convert to “civilization” and thus has targeted the energy toward its own native population. The basic formula is the same – in earlier times it was paganism, human sacrifice, slavery – now it is xenophobia, racism, xenophobia etc.
Guru Hargobind Sahib carried 2 swords to signify spiritual and temporal sovereignity.
The bibles verses placing a Warrior’s death below monkhood, are insulting.
https://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Miri_Piri
About how my “faith” looks, we don’t want pussies:
Regarding beef, US per cap beef consumption went up as it lost ground to USSR. It won Cold War as it came down, there’s also the whole Aryan angle & horse vs cow slaughter as part of conversion.
Ano4 you have no clue what Warrior virtues or any other are, you’re a christcuck..
Funny thing about white fragility, you all use the exact same strategies outlined there.
“For many whites, the naming of white racial power is the issue rather than its existence.”
p. 96
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
If my neighbor is making a mistake I should in kindness correct him. If he is ripping out the beating heart of someone in his household as a sacrifice to a Sun Demon I should try to stop him.
There are still plenty of problems outside of Europe that Europeans could fix if they had the will to do so. You are correct that the self-destruction we are witnessing is a perversion and misapplication of a formula that had once brought much good into the world. The problem is not the formula itself but the perversion. A Christian culture without Christianity is a very dangerous and aversive thing.
If something like strong physicalist determinism is true we can’t choose or change anything about our beliefs about free will anyway. Also passions, anxieties and conflict will all be determined to happen by laws of nature, not caused by ideas we may or may not have, these would constitute some kind of epiphenomena to the real causal agent.
I think things like square circles and other self contradictory concepts fall into this category.
Agreed. No one can change his ideas about anything.
“Learning” is bringing into full consciousness what you have always thought. We never get anything new from books. They only tell us what we already knew but couldn’t articulate.
That is why you cannot persuade anyone of anything. You can only discover those who already agree with you.
So, if you encounter the idea that there is no free will, and it doesnt strike you as something you have always really known, then you are one of those who are not predetermined to think that way.
So cheer up! There is never any reason to think other than what your heart desires. Indeed, there is not the possibility of doing so.
As for materialism, I reject the division between the physical and the spiritual as outdated. They are the same thing, Science has shown that go deep down enough in the atom, and there is quite literally nothing there. The physical is something we don’t know doing we doing know what.
The word “Indio” has strong negative connotations in Mexico. Peruvian society is a lot less racist (maybe because, in contrast to Mexico, the majority of the people there have indigenous blood). Besides, the term “Quechua” means exactly the same thing, and they have no objection to it.
Yea, like when Germans raped and enslaved Slavs for centuries; there were many benefits to the world, and it brought you to such a state of ‘enlightenment’ you get turned on by it now|| 🙂
I doubt it is for most of the readers of the Unz forum.
The only thing is often Europeans don’t think in terms of generic ‘white’ racial power (more an American thing) but in the power of particular ethnic groups; Russian ethnic power, Ukrainian, Italian ethnic power etc. Only progressives will think these are bad or unnatural things in themselves or be in denial about their existence.
DiAngelo and her ‘field’ of research have plenty of explanations of how to forestall criticism of their ideas by appealing to the principle that any challenge or rejection of their various claims and assertions proves them true (basically a question begging fallacy). Things will get interesting though if the CRT crowd in the US try to use it as a guide to describing and reshaping international relations.
Yes. I suspect that there is more of the native culture surviving in the Andes than the world in general knows. It is a place that I would like to visit.
Paintings and statues of some fat little man. No thanks.
Compare to this:
https://i.imgur.com/X2utogS.jpg
Or, this:
https://images.oca.org/icons/lg/november/1124bmercurius.jpg
Thanks for your answers Altan.
No, not really LOL
My mother is quite religious but my father wasn’t. He decided to send us to that private Catholic school because we would be taught in Basque and besides they were introducing modern pedagogical methods.
In fact, Father Superior took it upon himself to teach us (a mixed class of boys and girls) sexual education. We had a lot of fun learning sex from a celibate priest 🙂
However, I know that you have misgivings about Jesuits so I must warn you that I was born very close to the birthplace of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. They have a nice sanctuary there and the Pope once came to visit it so a group of people in my hometown organized a march through the mountains to go and see him. A friend of mine and I took advantage of the occasion to paint some graffiti on their route mocking them. The flock of sheep runs to meet their shepherd, baaa…. something along those lines.
Now I wouldn’t engage in that childish behavior. I have rather learned to feel proud that important people like St Ignatius were my countrymen.
My school wasn’t run by the Jesuits though. It was run by the Passionists.
No, not really, again. One is almost an inevitable consequence of the other. Were primitive humans capable of following our religious beliefs? –> What will happen to our religious beliefs when humanity is much more advanced than now?
But I do agree with you that all of this is very basic stuff. I’ve never understood how so many religious people live their lives without ever asking themselves this type of questions. Incidentally, this is something that I remember we openly discussed in our religion classes: if we meet advanced aliens and see that they don’t believe in God, should we abandon religion?
Perhaps the problem was that our religion teachers were not rigid enough and gave us too much freedom to think “wrong” ideas.
BTW, Mikel, you’ve managed to piss off someone in comment 470 for no other reason than politely asking reasonable questions, so congratulations 🙂 You have graduated, my friend. Use your new powers wisely.
(Sorry to AP, who I have nothing whatsoever against and find a polite and thoughtful commenter)
Yes. Strange, that. But I am under no illusions, I still have a lot to learn from you.
This is the problem of discussing religious matters openly. You’re going to upset some people. But if you cannot discuss religion in an anonymous venue like this where intelligent religious people post regularly, where can you do it? You may remember that I generally try to avoid doing it in real life because I don’t want to upset or even less, dissuade people who are close to me.
I don’t agree with your assessment of this commenter though. You clearly haven’t touched his wrong buttons yet.
Changing the subject, the other day I crossed Nevada through US-Route 50 (the so-called loneliest road in America). One of the most amazing rides I remember in the US. It follows the trail used in the 19th century by the Pony Express riders through deserts, mountains, dunes, plains, juniper and pine forests,… so much natural beauty. Hope you’ll also enjoy your planned December trip to the West.
Mm, https://www.macleans.ca/society/are-white-canadians-getting-conscious-of-their-whiteness/
EU federalism, inter-marriage & immigration will change that||
I mean the only way to counter CRT is a wholesale rejection at point of sword||
Through mass signatures and mass petitions for this question?
Hardline Communists?
Please see my comments below.
Yes, apparently more this than a Ukrainian patriot. Or maybe simply enough of a realist to avoid risking his own skin and life.
I took a look at the relevant referendums again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_sovereignty_referendum#:~:text=The%20Ukrainian%20sovereignty%20referendum%20was,and%20only%20Soviet%20Union%20referendum.&text=In%20December%201991%2C%20Ukraine%20held,August%2024%20declaration%20of%20independence.
You’re correct that this question got 81.7% of the vote in Ukraine in March 1991:
“Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of a Union of Soviet Sovereign States on the basis on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine?”
Meanwhile, though, this question (the one which had the map with the data for above) got 71.5% of the vote in Ukraine in March 1991:
Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?
I don’t know the oblast breakdown for the first referendum here, but I suspect that Ukrainians outside of Kiev and the far west were willing to support both a new union based on de facto independence and a new union based on vaguer principles (“rights and freedom” and all of that) whereas the far west and Kiev were much more wary about supporting a new union based on vaguer principles but were willing to support a new union based on de facto independence. This does suggest that the far west and Kiev were determined to secure Ukrainian independence but that people in the rest of Ukraine might have viewed independence as something that would have been nice to have, but also something that was not necessarily essential and thus as something that might have been possible to compromise on with the center (Moscow).
Is my interpretation here a particularly bad one?
Well, please see my comments right above.
Anyway, though, for what it’s worth, I actually do fully support Ukraine’s pro-Western course because I do think that the West should be able to claim a part of the East Slavic world for itself–and of course it certainly significantly helps that this is what the Ukrainian people themselves actually want. I would hope that Belarus would likewise eventually follow Ukraine’s course in regards to this, possibly several decades from now. Interestingly enough, Ukraine’s refusal to participate in the Eurasian Economic Union allows this union to become genuinely Eurasian in the long(er)-run if both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will eventually join it since this will likely eventually allow this union to have a roughly equal number of both European and Asian (including Central Asian) peoples–thus making this union genuinely Eurasian. This would not have been possible with Ukraine’s huge European population distorting the population scales in this union in favor of Europeans–thus severely undercutting this union’s claim of being Eurasian.
My own interest in this question is more related to the fact that I’m trying to figure out just how inevitable Ukrainian independence actually was with a “point of departure” (from real life) in, say, 1980 or so.
The collapse/break-up of Austria-Hungary and the partition of India have both already previously shown what can happen when a unified territory becomes divided, no?
Frankly, I suspect that Galicia might have developed a pseudo-separatist movement in 2013-2014 had Yanukovych succeeded in crushing the Maidan protests in Kiev during this time but not in Galicia and Volhynia. In such a scenario, Galicians would not have formally aimed to secede from Ukraine; rather, they would have aimed to overthrow Yanukovych. However, because Yanukovych’s hold on power in Kiev and everywhere to the east of Kiev would have been very secure, a mass decision by Galicians to rebel against Yanukovych in this scenario would have been tantamount to a de facto Galician secession from the rest of Ukraine. In such a scenario, I suspect that both Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr would have been major battlegrounds–comparable to Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and Mariupol in real life.
But anyway, Yeah, Galicians certainly deserve credit for pushing Ukraine towards the right path and in the right direction. Ironically, annexing western Ukraine was one of the best things that Stalin ever did. It unfortunately and tragically resulted in decades of misery for western Ukrainians, but it also allowed western Ukraine to become the necessary nationalistic core for the rest of Ukraine, thus preventing Ukraine from slipping back into a state of Imperial Moskali Domination (TM) in 2013-2014. 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi
Working yourself to death voluntarily is pretty much a part of their culture plus Japan has a serious Yakuza problem organized crime is woven into their society like the Mafia in Sicily.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/12/never-get-in-bed-with-the-yakuza/
It’s a fascinating read, the author blames the Olympus Scandal and even suggests the massive real estate bust in the 80s-90s from which Japan never recovered on the Yakuza.
The Spaniards didn’t come to the new world armed with chemists and microbiologists. The natives died of disease because of factor beyond the control of the Spanish. Anyhow, I only dispute the claim that European accounts of human sacrifice in the new world were somehow misleading. If you want to argue the Spanish colonies in the new world were bad for the natives, that’s fine by me.
So you are a Basque, interesting, yes quite interesting people and history.
The religion adapts alongside humanity or it will disappear? What else?
That Aliens and God stuff is non matter for us.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/Siddhartha_fasting%2C_old_reduced-size_replica_of_original_in_Lahore_Museum%2C_Gandhara%2C_2nd-3rd_century_AD%2C_slate_-_Linden-Museum_-_Stuttgart%2C_Germany_-_DSC03816.jpg/727px-thumbnail.jpg
Fat?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERWWjJMWsAAMYs_.jpg:large
Here is a depiction of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, during his ascetic phase, before he achieved the state of awakening and established our religion. These statues are probably from 3rd or 4th century. Though Buddha later understood the folly of such extreme asceticism, he always wanted himself test and see what results different kind of exertions and practices produce, during those ancient times, there were many spiritual teachers who claimed that by extreme exertion and asceticism one can achieve spiritual states that are beyond the mundane existence of common man. So Buddha himself put those practices into test, so great was his manly willpower / Virya. Empirically he proved himself that self mortification does not produce results on the path. Soon someone is going to say that it should had been self evident to him, but to them I will say, how it could have been when there was no modern science and land was full of such ascetics who claimed divine results from such practices?
Thankfully Buddha did not die after such fasting, thanks to a milkmaid named Sujata who gave him rice boiled in milk, so rice pudding? And Siddhartha gained his strength back and was inspired to create one of our core religious doctrines the Middle Way.
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BBXGBH/pakistan-punjab-region-lahore-national-museum-fasting-buddha-BBXGBH.jpg
It’s these sort of baseless statements that make your posts tiresome to read. Who is really going to bothered to dispute a claim so detached from reality? Even if you meant it in the sense that determinism is true, there are better ways to state it so that the meaning is clearer.
I think this perspective does people a disservice. If life has been good to you, it’s very easy to sit back and tell yourself that things are as they had to be and could only ever have been. But someone who has a had bad run of luck in life – a huge factor in life outcomes – would, if he accepted your reasoning, likely become inclined to think that his bad luck, and thus his suffering, will continue indefinitely, potentially permanently, thereby simply adding to his suffering.
I would argue a healthier perspective is to say we don’t know, and can’t ever know, for certain if determinism is true or not, and that it is therefore better to believe in free will. If you believe in free will and determinism is true, it doesn’t matter because the choice wasn’t yours to make anyway (it was something already decided billions of years ago). But if you believe in determinism while free will is true, then you may neglect to take certain actions that could improve your well-being because you falsely believed you were powerless to influence your life.
That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware that Buddha ever admitted an error. One of the things I’ve found off-putting about Buddhism – apart from finding certain claims about reality completely unconvincing – is that its teachings consist mostly of a series of overconfident assertions rather than arguments. In other words, just because Buddha said something is no reason to accept it as true.
https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1336422901717889024
OPCW whisteblowers were calling out the lies of ‘Assad gassing his own people’ war propaganda, which was trotted out to justify the continued occupation of Eastern Syria and the massive support of moderate headchoppers by Tel Aviv and its subcontractors in the West and MENA.
That not a single media outlet in the mainstream has covered this should tell you all that you need to know about the so-called “free and independent media”.
Both AaronB and Ano4? Buddhism isnt deterministic, yes some Hinayana schools are, but not the Mahayana. Not at all! Determinism is not far away from essentialism Ano4 and what else determinism is than grasping, and those who have grasping – do not have the view. Literally they dont understand anything about Dharma and Im not speaking in Prajna-Paramita sense.
Though I must raise my hat to AaronB for being logically consistent, to solve the problem of evil in such way is to me quite odd, but its even stranger that a Jew is proponent of such logic. Though I specifically laid these questions as traps to you. You have a potential be a good Buddhist, for your attachment to Jewishness is not an obstacle to you. Though Karma is never predetermined, its true that we suffer because of our karma, if one accepts this unpleasant truth, then one has accepted one of the major truths of Buddha.
In Dharma we are proponents of a Middle Way, its good and beneficial to love ones family and kin, but to think that ones nation or family has a permanent essence, or quality that makes it to have attributes that are always better and more special than those of other nations or families, that kind of thinking is a fetter, an obstacle, as is thinking that ones kin doesnt matter at all, both extremes lead to bad results.
We are proponents of dialectical method and love debating, we really do! Also Buddha admitted numerous times that he was wrong, even after attaining Nirvana. Few times he lost in a debate, like when he was against of admitting women to monkhood, and sometimes he lost by vote. He himself ordered that the highest authority in the monastic community is consensus. Buddha was adamant that all changes in Buddhist community are made by consensus.
We must remember that Buddha himself came from an aristocratic republic, where nobles voted who will be a king.
Buddhism isn’t deterministic, but it is thoroughly conditional. Because this is – that is, because a set of conditions arise – this phenomenon arises, because this set of conditions disappear – this phenomenon ceases. The web of conditions is encompassing the whole of the physical reality. The flow of conditions is going through cycles of arising and ceasing universes through times immemorial.
It is a complex, non-linear network of causal nodes in which each cause is also a consequence. The causes and consequences are interlinked and weighed in a very complex manner. It is ia dynamic system in a constant state of flux. Each life path is a non-linear flow of causality. At the same time, the basic fabric of reality is experienced as psycho-physical units of experience: the dharmas (small d), the whole experience and its adequate description being the Dharma (capital D).
If instead of using d/Dharma, we used quanta and/or bits the Western mind would probably accept this description as more or less adequate. The karma is then the causality linking the dharmas in both space and time. It is the law effecting the causal agents. It does not exist if causal agents do not exist. Each causal agent is a karmic construct. But regardless of terminology, the whole representation of things means that if enough necessary conditions are present, then something will happen, a causal agent will arise and effect the whole web of reality in a certain manner triggering a certain outcome.
In the 1930ies, the conditions for a major crisis in Europe were present. This crisis was partly due to the role played by international Jewry in the world affairs This crisis was to effect painful results upon different groups of people, with the Jewry being hardly hit because it was pivotal to several prior developments of European socioeconomic and political trends.
The main and most important cause of the calamity that befell the European Jewry was the disproportionate role played by the Jews in the worldwide Communist movement and especially in the Russian revolution. The Judeo-Bolshevism was the direct cause of Holocaust.
The Judeo-Bolshevism was itself a consequence of numerous causal links going back millenia and intertwined with the religious and socioeconomic evolution of the European populations. The Holocaust did not start in 1939, it was centuries in making.
The peaceful co-existence of the European gentiles and Jews has become impossible. Suffering was bound to follow for both of them.
Could this have been averted entirely? I don’t think so. Could it have played out in a different way, possibly yes. But these are rhetorical questions and hindsight is 20/20.
But you still believe in progress…
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/a7/91/fc/a791fc3e66c75c24990c11e23a4520e0–footprints-lotus.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbE6sAAUcAAi-NA.jpg
Buddhism is not about the historical Buddha. He is not some kind of Messiah or Godman. One sees the Tathagata etc.
Perhaps one of the ugliest sculptures I have ever seen. One of the gravest problems we face today is we have confused ideas about what is beautiful.
Are you a “my beauty is bigger than yours ” type of person? Cause you sure seem to be.
Also:
https://youtu.be/VL9whwwTK6I
Now peace off…
Your write well and eloquently and I mostly agree with you.
But Mahayana is not fatalistic, and are you sure that at closer analysis every causal agent is a Karmic construct? What about unconditioned phenomena? There are such dharmas and they affect our reality. There are Karmic tendencies not Karmic necessities.
By practicing pure perception and pure view, we see less and less phenomenas as something having fixed or even partially fixed nature, in ultimate analysis even conditionality disappears. Things could always have happened in a different way, nothing is fixed, not our nature, nor is our relations towards the past.
In my opinion this is one extreme, its true that for Theravadas historical Buddha is much more important, but we too in Mahayana acknowledge that without him this cycle could have been without a Buddha, many peculiarities in our religion arise from the specific quirks and inventions of the current Buddha of our era, Siddhartha Gautama.
Because of his heroic struggle and exertion for countless lives, we now enjoy the fruits of his merit. Ano4 if one man has vast compassion and strives ceaselessly for the benefit of many, then such being has power to change the lives of humanity. We are not as collectivist as you possibly imply.
It can be said that the Buddhism is all about the free will that we possess, that we can by our own power defy the tides of karmical cycles and go against the stream, and forge our own path. Even Buddha said that his Dharma goes against stream of reality.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.101.than.html
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qQMMvv5UfS8/TdjHFqLetuI/AAAAAAAAACI/ZqulK3rhtgw/s1600/Bhavachakra.jpg
As you well know this is Bhavachakra painting, it is allegory of our cyclical existence, but always in these paintings there is Buddha outside of the cycle pointing at the moon, which means that he shows that the existence outside of the cycle is possible, that you dont need to a prisoner of the cycle.
https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-studies/lam-rim/karma-advanced/analysis-of-free-will-versus-determinism
To me its confusing that you think that your standards of beauty are somehow objectively definitive. By the way that sculpture is not from the 4th century, but from the 2nd and possibly made by Hellenes, and I agree its not a beautiful statue, nor it was made to be.
I agree with most of what you wrote. One has to explain according to the level o the audience. There are advanced topics, such as madhyamaka and shunyata that should be discussed only when the four noble truths and the eightfold path are understood.
For the level with which we are dealing in our discussion, it is sufficient to clearly state that Avidya – existential ignorance – is the fundamental cause of becoming and that becoming itself is intertwined with stress and angst, leading to suffering. Removing ignorance decreases suffering tremendously.
For the rest of what you wrote there are people who are wiser than I am and who have explained it better and more concisely than I will ever be able:
https://youtu.be/C630mrltHOc
Also, Bodhidhama has said that once a mindstream produces the will to Liberation, then sooner or later Liberation will follow. It could take a second or a thousand kalpas, but it is bound to happen.
I have faith in Bodhidhama’s teaching. I know that if I apply his recommendations, outlined in the Treaty of the two Entrances, then one day my wrong views will be replaced with wisdom and I will leave the path of sorrow and death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Scroll_of_the_Treatise_on_the_Two_Entrances_and_Four_Practices
When a culture and its people are healthy then beauty is quite objective. Italian Renaissance paintings all differ but they adhere to certain definitions of beauty. Bach’s works differ but they adhere to certain definitions of beauty. Compare this to paintings of Pollock. They all differ but they are joke. There is no identifiable beauty in them unless the observer is a serious criminal. Likewise with rap music. These are not the products of healthy people.
Well, no free will can actually be a very freeing and consoling idea. It relieves you of responsibility and regret, and futile struggle.
I find it an idea that especially appealing to those who had a bad life. Dont be tortured by regret or a sense of failure. It could have been no other way.
The Buddha, who offered this idea, and the Greek philosophers, thought it was therapeutic, as do I.
It is unpopular in the modern world. If you dont like it, and it depresses you, then you need different ideas to live by, and that’s OK too.
Buddha started out as an extreme ascetic, realized that led nowhere, and stopped all effort, which led to Enlightenment. Surrender.
You don’t know whats predetermined, so you should always make a reasonable effort. Just, no regrets, and no guilt, and no struggling against the natural trend when it becomes clear.
People who have produced this were probably way healthier than Renaissance Western Europeans.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Harry_Robson/publication/324538205/figure/fig16/AS:[email protected]/The-Shigir-idol-courtesy-of-Svetlana-Savchenko-and-Mikhail-Zhilin-original-drawing-by.png
Well said, I envy your swift progress on the path, and to think that last summer I didnt take your Buddhism seriously.
I dont know, we have been for eternity in Samsara already. Btw why you call him Bodhidhama and not Bodhidharma?
Or maybe AaronB thinks in some odd and complicated way that Jews and antisemites are predestined to be in an eternal dialectic relationship and struggle, if so then that kind of thinking is very bad and it will be like a self fulfilling curse for him.
No, he just understood that such extreme self mortification will not bring positive results, he struggled quite much after his ascetic period, just not in a physically painful way.
The break-up of Austria-Hungary was a geopolitical disaster for those small nations but it did not result in a 90’s style economic collapse/gangster takeover.
Possible, and there would have been messy resistance in the Center. If so, it would have been a Taiwan-style “we are the free Ukrainians” situation rather than a movement towards an independent non-Ukrainian, Galician identity.
That is exactly what I think.
Everything comes into the world with its opposite. The individual thing does not exist.
If Jews exist, there must be those who hate them. While enemies on the surface, they are actually embracing in a symbiotic dance. They are frenemies.
Seeing this, I can be humane to the antisemite, understand his suffering, understand he is necessarily trapped in a one sided view, and not condemn him completely. He too is a necessary part of the whole.
If I thought the antisemite had no right to exist, I might want to put him in an extermination camp.
The desire to see one side win completely, always leads to aggression.
You are free to read the story your own way. To me, the significance of the story is that, after trying hard to overcome his nature, he achieved enlightenment only when he surrendered to it.
The Buddha’s enigmatic smile, and the look of peace on his face, suggests someone who has gone beyond struggle, and has learned harmony even in a world of apparent conflict, which he sees beyond.
You still think the apparent conflict is real. To which I say, you do as you must, and what is nectar for one mas is poison for another.
Of course I believe in progress. The fastest way to improve is to be critical of the world you live in, with an eye to change your circumstances, rather than just resign yourself to the inadequate status quo.
Just a typo.
I’ve found the unironic future dream world for AaronB, except it doesn’t even need to have technology to aid it since he only wants us to “enlighten” ourselves into its state.
https://twitter.com/Merryweatherey/status/1185636106257211392
If you were a careful reader of my philosophy, you’d know I think we are already in our future perfect dream world, and always have been, and there is no need to go anywhere or do anything.
I hold by the Mahayana Buddhist saying, that the world of Samsara and Nirvana, are one.
We have only to realize this.
But the average man cannot understand this philosophy.
You are not okay in the head if you think that your thinking is not rigidly dualistic.
“Dont make gods into demons,” is an old Buddhist saying. Get help, try to think yourself just as a human, forget all about jews and antisemites, even just for a moment. You are just reifying your mental patterns by hanging out on such sites as this. Its not doing any good for you.
Non dualism is a tough concept for most to understand. Its subtle.
Most people, like you, think its monism. Differences get dissolved. Antisemites and Jews lose their differences and become one.
But monism, as opposed to dualism, sets up another duality, another choice, another preference.
Wherever there is choice, there is duality. When both are accepted, you have transcended duality.
The issue with you is, that you are avery classical good and evil dualist, and positivist, who would have been very at home in Christianity, or less comfortably but still suitably, in Theravada Buddhism. For some personal reason, you have sought refuge in a tradition that is a poor fit.
On the popular level, of course, Mahayana Budddjism has always been dualistic, and you can practice it on that level. But it has always been at least less dualistic than most other traditions, so even on this level, it isn’t a good fit for someone who is intensely, fiercely dualistic and positivist.
But sometimes, people choose the tradition that is the worst fit for their qualities, and then try and change it to suit them. That happens more than enough times, that there is a mystery there.
Exactly. Its rude to do it in real life, and mean, but if we’re setting up a space to have intellectual discussions, then that’s the right place.
Or should there just never be discussions on controversial subjects? In some societies, that’s what its like.
Should we become such a society? It seems we are.
Humans are humans. We are weak, frail creatures who can’t handle too much truth. We cling to beliefs and illusions like life preservers.
Every few generations, people become more open to discussing controversial ideas, then it closes up again. We are in a closing up period.
I don’t blame a frail and frightened humanity too much, I have pity for them and wish them the best.
We are just frightened animals.
You lucky bastard! That sounds so amazing, I envy you. I wish I could be there right now.
I hope to be leaving by the end of month. I’m looking into winter bags – not as expensive as I thought, like six or seven hundred for a decent-20 bag.
I may include route 50 on my trip, thanks!
I’m interpreting it into its appropriate, nonsensical result: a totally meaningless existence of immobility trapped in boxes(metaphorical or otherwise).
There’s a reason why I believe in struggle as beauty.
Even pure, unfiltered madness is more charming than that.
According to Mahayana Buddhism, this is already the nature of the world. The world is an illusion, and our passions are being evoked by phantoms.
We already are sitting on couches plugged into VR headsets having our dopamine centers stimulated by unreal things.
Except, there is no reality to awake to. Nothing is real. Its a scary notion for some, having nothing to stand on.
But we might be happier and more carefree, if we saw life this way. Life can be a true adventure, we can be like madmen who venture all, careless of our lives. We can become fearless.. But we are not free to choose this vision- this vision chooses some happy few. For the rest, it is almost cruel to expose them to it.
The issue is, what is truly fun. What is satisfying for its own sake – intrinsically satisfying. Those things, we should organize our life around.
Another aspect of the Mahayana Buddhist vision is, that this world, just as it is, not quite real, is already perfect. We have only to see it on that level. That is why, Nirvana is Samsara, as the sutras say.
Working for a future perfection, is a delusion, in which we throw away our lives. People who live by this illusion, are always the worst advertisement for it, because they are notably unhappy and depressed.
Ironically, such people always try and coerce the happy people into their system. Enraged by happiness, they cannot stand that some people are happy and free.
The article is a bit dated (~3 weeks) but it contains a good overview of the recent armenoid-azeri war. It also delves into debates such as if Russian AA is overrated given how easily Azeris dominated the skies with drones (short answer: no).
I’m a very unintelligent person, but it took me literally 40 seconds to capture the literal destination of what you’re trying to say in image format. Lovely.
And now, if you’re so clever, you’ll also realize the innate ridiculousness of your commentary.
Or, you will probably continue to pose on your imagined wisdom. I’m sure it means a lot for you, and you’re very attached to it. And that’s why you feel this desperate need to ramble on it endlessly to us and advertise it(primarily, of course, to yourself).
Because surely, Buddhism has nothing said in regards to attachments.
Yes, we are in full agreement here.
Religions have been concocted by different human groups since time immemorial in order to give meaning to the puzzle of human existence and death. They obviously needed to be adapted to the cultural traits of the societies where they appeared or else they wouldn’t have had any success.
But that is what we see today as well. Scientific progress and a better understanding of nature has made old religions obsolete and more and more people, especially in the advanced countries, find themselves unable to believe in them. It’s not that people like me are immoral or victims of any satanic plot, as you suggested in a previous thread. We are victims of the fact that religions have not been able to adapt to a time of widespread critical thinking like this.
Religions have probably reached a dead end, just like witchcraft and alchemy did before them.
Yes, it does matter if you substitute God by reincarnation, for example. As a matter of fact, I think that if an Alien civilization much more advanced than us ever makes contact, they will be less likely to believe in living creatures becoming new living creatures after death through some esoteric mechanism than in the existence of God.
BTW, your idea that genes are unrelated to the questions that I posed above is wrong. I actually think that genetics is deeply ingrained in the whole idea of reincarnation. The fact that a human may reincarnate as a lower form of life implies that he will not be able to achieve Nirvana or Enlightenment in that state. But what differentiates a living creature from another if not the information contained in their DNA?
So, at some point, there must exist a genetic jump (necessarily mediated through genes, obviously) that separates enlightenment-capable creatures from those that are not. If you want to maintain your beliefs coherent with current basic understanding of biology, that is.
I very much believe that in Wahhabi madrassas children are indoctrinated to believe that the true ummah is in eternal struggle with the kuffar, and its Allahs will and his way to test true believers. Your line of thought is very similar AaronB, but for you Allah is inherently dialectical nature of reality, but still in the end it can be said that for you and wahhabis the ultimate is highly impersonal and inhuman.
I have for a long time suspected that as Saudi elites use common Muslims as their pawns, so too the elites of some another semitic group do to their commoners. And the elites of both groups constantly spread propaganda to their people, how they are different from others, how they are under a siege, how others hate them and want their destruction. Elites of both groups are demonic, but not their commoners, who suffer under such demons.
His Holiness always says that those who have awakened to the empty nature of reality, have genuine human warmth in their character.
Also according to him, “one must properly maintain the correct view of emptiness and the altruistic mind of enlightenment, not losing these even for the sake of one’s life. These are again and again said to be the root of the vows and pledges.”
Those pledges are Samaya and Pratimoksha vows, which are the very basis of Mahayana.
I actually do think you have a hard time understanding my philosophy 🙂 It is subtle, and does not easily fit into the binary, obvious categories used by the vulgar to explain reality.
You consistently don’t “get” it, but I applaud you for trying. “Lived with” for a while, my philosophy may become more comprehensible.
Existence is already totally meaningless, in that it doesn’t mean anything beyond itself.
As for immobility trapped in boxes, that doesn’t follow from a world with no meaning, where nothing must be done. Things get done, for the sheer fun of it. You do things because they are intrinsically satisfying, not because you have to.
If you find struggle beautiful, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t struggle. Struggle away! Have a blast! I enjoy hardship in nature and travel.
But if you are doing it out of fear or duty, or because you think it leads to a “better future”, you are not enjoying yourself, and are trapped in illusion.
This vision, does not actually change the way you live. You can continue doing exactly as you always have done, the same pleasures. Only, you do it differently- with less fear, and more zest.
A Daniel Chieh who adopted this vision, would do the same things, but more laughingly, with more zest, and less anxiety.
But this vision, must deign to choose you – you cannot choose it. You can only live with it, for a while, keep it company, and hope it deigns to bestow its grace upon you
Not if by Western mind you mean modern science.
In fact, the description you have given of what Buddhism thinks about reality and causality seems to be in conflict with what Sean Carroll called the most important insight of 20th century physics: that the universe is probabilistic rather than deterministic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminacy
I see what you are saying. The Jewish belief that they are in a struggle with antisemites, lead hatred and conflict.
I understand the logic but like most conventional wisdom, I would submit it gets it wrong.
The source of hatred and conflict, is the belief that you must win. Paradoxically, the source of conflict, is the desire to end conflict!
Why? Because if you cannot accept the existence of your foe, you will hate him and try and exterminate him. And indeed, how much destruction has been wrought, by the Wests noble wars of ideology, trying to make “goid” win?
The Wahabbis believe, they are trapped in a war, that they will eventually win, and must win. They do mlt accept their foe – they hate him totally abd want his complete eradication.
This ideology, of one side winning, is the source of hatred and conflict.
The vision I am outlining, is a version of love. I accept the antisemite, I even love him, because I know he is a precondition for my existence, as I his. On the surface, we are enemies, beneath, we are secretly bound by love. We have transcended the duality of love and hate.
This is what it means that the world is Love. This is what it means, to love your enemies.
In my vision, you have no true enemies.
Indeed, it is well said. And when knows that ones foe is a part of one, he regards him with warmth.
Im not again having this discussion, I already explained to you couple threads ago that there is no scientifically proven theory of mind and there are lots of different theories regarding the nature of the mind. Its not my problem that you cant remember our old discussion.
You are quite boring. I dont have any problem with your atheism and I dont think that its necessarily because of some satanic plot or demonic influence, if I said so, then I were just messing with you.
Aliens really, and not just that but what you likely think of them thinking? Can you be anymore hypothetical?
Believing in monotheistic god is not an universal trait, but co-operation between humans is. You are again too rigid with your line of thinking. If Buddhism is helpful even for a some minority group, then the Buddhism will survive, if its not helpful for anyone then it will disappear.
Sorry to nitpick, but I and some other Buddhists dont like the term reincarnation, rebirth is better, because incarnation implies that someone incarnates again or something, like sould or person, but once again I remind that we dont believe that there is some essentially existing soul or personhood.
For us the mind is dependent on perceiving something, think about it, every moment your mind perceives something, there is no moment when you dont feel something, sometimes you are more conscious about the moment, sometimes less, but you always feel or sense something. Even eyes closed, even if you try to not think or feel anything. So we claim that there is a stream of constant perception or sensing, mindstream we call it. The physicist Freeman Dyson also claimed, that the mind is part of the reality just like matter, maybe for you its not sensible, but for us it is.
I cant understand what is problematic about the genes regarding the Buddhism? Yes there are various complicated cause and effect relations in our reality, yes everything is dependent on each other, and I didnt claim that genes are unrelated, just that its highly likely that there is one specific gene that makes us to feel desire for something.
Genetic jump? Are you capable of abstract thinking? There are no clear divide between various hominid species, all those categorizations are almost like lines drawn in water. Its not like there is clear cut divide between Homo Erectus or Homo Heudelbergensis. The evolutionary changes are very subtle and gradual, as too is the slowly growing divergence between subspecies.
The Buddhahood is dependent on numerous factors, that is very much acknowledged in Buddhism. There should be suitable civilization, that people are not chaotic and tribal, or hungry all the times or warring constantly and so on. We are not claiming that Buddhahood is somekind of inevitability, that there must always arise a Buddha, no we dont claim at all so. We very much believe that there has been numerous epochs when there havent been any Buddhas and that there are myriads of worlds that havent had and dont have any Buddhas.
You have amusingly managed to combine both your terrible theory of mind with your incoherence of speech. The fact that you will instantly flip to hypocrisy is a good example of why things like this happen:
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3924
I mostly consider it to be a waste of time to engage with you, which is why you get mockery. But for the sake of understanding of others: I struggle because it is beautiful, and because I believe that there is a certain alchemy of the soul which is refined through effort; furthermore, there is much ugliness that ought to be abolished.
It really doesn’t matter if any of it is per se real or not, and to a considerable extent I believe that it isn’t, but that is not the important part. It is in the effort that beauty lies in, and insofar as it actually might accomplish to something greater overall, it is only incidental. I do actually think there real good and evil, and it is upon us to build a better world, but even if wasn’t the case, your own philosophy would find it meaningless, since none of this is real.
As thus, then, there is nothing “wrong” with murder, sorrow, effort, joy, or anything. Nothing has meaning. Nor does your ramblings. The fact that you’re trying to repeatedly state your presumed enlightened state is merely a sign of attachment, an effort to promote something that you likely have doubts in.
So you are, basically, attempting to preach a rather ridiculous version of something I often have considered already, only with the hilarity of posing as if you knew, and pretending to be wise about it.
And that’s why you only get mockery. You don’t even deserve that, really.
If you think those primitive sticks reflect a healthier people than the ones that produced Botticelli then this conversation has ended. From my perspective there is no point talking to certifiably insane people.
I think that they just strive to subjugate their enemy, or gain control over him, just like the other group. But they are much weaker so brutality is often only option left to them.
You are a one strange dude, I hope that you find a Nazi girlfriend or something. Nowadays world is so strange that everything is possible…
No way thats your type, innit?
https://image.jimcdn.com/app/cms/image/transf/dimension=406×10000:format=jpg/path/s4a89e80e4f492bee/image/i513ca44604b59f13/version/1572693719/image.jpg
“We are secretly bound by love”
-AaronB
So archaic Greeks were not healthy people?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Plank_figure.jpg
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xoanon
You seem to be quite conflicted man…
Its the joy of self expression. In your mind, all activity is done out of need, out of lack, but some people act out of exuberance. Being depressed, you understandably cannot imagine this.
I have always said this is just my vision. Whoever dislikes it, I wish him the best of luck in finding happiness however he can. I have complete and total respect for everyone’s version of the good life, provided it does not impede my ability to live my version of the good life.
Moreover, the world functioning on the principle of polarity, there simply must be people who take the exact opposite view of mine. I cherish and respect such people, because underneath, we define each other, and are really, one.
The surface opposition conceals inner unity. Instead of fighting people who disagree with me, as you do, my vision integrates them, because it is whole, and not one sided. Nothing is excluded. People who have an opposite vision to mine, have an honored place in my vision.
The source of your inability to understand, is that you don’t apply the principle really thoroughly. If nothing has meaning, even that fact has no meaning , so there is no reason to “force” yourself to “do nothing”, like the ascetic – instead, do what you like!
This is where most people stumble, and I do suspect it might be too subtle for you to understand, because you think in binaries. But it is all good.
There is no scientifically proven theory of anything. Proofs belong to the realm of mathematics or logic, not to natural sciences that only deal with evidences in favor of one theory until it is empirically falsified.
So the most you can hope for is that some scientific theory will provisionally be consistent with whatever religious/mythical ideas your religious group came up with to explain things that were then poorly understood.
But in fact, that everything we call mind is just the result of our brain activity is not disputed nowadays. We know this with a huge amount of certainty because if we injure our brains we damage our mental abilities. And if we die, there ceases to be any mental activity detectable anywhere from the dead person. Brains stop functioning after they stop receiving blood and any manifestation of their activity therefore stops as well.
There are probably few things as certain as this but, as I said, if you believe that biology is wrong on this matter, all you have to do is falsify it. Just believing it doesn’t change anything outside of your mind.
Yes, I would assume that you don’t care much about people being atheists. There are so many (and in so increasing numbers) of us. Your life would be quite miserable if you did.
But I do not find you boring. You are an intelligent, knowledgeable and quite sincere person. Which is why I keep torturing you with my questions. It is interesting f0r me to see what your answers are to the same sort of questions that I have often posed to Christians and others. The only Buddhists I have ever met (one of them a very good friend of mine) were of the Western/hippie type and I couldn’t take them too seriously.
So far your answers have followed a surprisingly similar pattern to the Christians’. Denial that there is any contradiction between science and your beliefs and clinging to esoteric, sometimes Jesuitic argumentations to defend this lack of contradiction.
I thank you for your patience with me anyway. You are filling a big information vacuum that I had with regards to serious practitioners of Oriental religions.
If you drive it, make sure to stop at Sand Mountain outside Fallon. The wife, kids and I had a fantastic time climbing the massive sand dune. Just be careful about not getting your vehicle stuck in the sand. The area was on the edge of a sea that has since dried up and turned to desert. It’s very beautiful.
One needs to separate health from youth. The crude product produced by a healthy, primitive and youthful culture can be judged differently that crudeness in a fully developed one. As with people – vigorous crawling on all fours as a primary means of ambulation in an infant denotes health, in a 50 year old man – some sort of disability. So the Greek object you posted denotes health; Jackson Pollock smears, decline.
See my other comment. I don’t think the people making these sticks were healthier than those who produced Botticelli, but they are certainly healthier than the 21st century descendants of those who had produced Botticelli, who nowadays make sticks their art.
AP and Ano4 I think that our proud Greek is speaking about spiritual health, not physical.
You couldn’t possibly know that I’m depressed or not, much less make predictions on people who are depressed on their ability to imagine anything. That would imply consistency, and in a world with no reality, neither does there need to be any consistency.
Happiness has no meaning, dude.
Nonsense. Your version of the good life has no meaning, and so the desire of anyone else to remove your organs validates you. The fact that you have any objection shows that you think there’s a binary between yourself and the others. You should offer up your organs and sell them for Karlin’s fund. Any pain you feel is only validating to the overall truth of your being, after all, and has no actual meaning.
In summation:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/28/mysticism-and-pattern-matching/
You’re just a scrambled idiot who has rediscovered the solution of angst of every 15 year old and given it significance through chemical ingestion and now have to self-reinforce yourself through constant posing. I can say these things because unlike you, I can live in a world with consistency and reality, with meaningful consequences, if not on the material level, then on a spiritual level. You have nothing. Now, good for you to have scrambled your brains so you’re happy but don’t pretend that any of it makes sense and realize that you’re an insult to its serious practitioners.
Now go fuck yourself. Feel honored that I actually put in the time for you.
I am honored, Comrade Chieh 🙂
If you apply the principle of no meaning consistently, you must apply it even to itself, in a final, recursive act. Since my desire for happiness is not ultimately important, there is no reason not to pursue what I find makes me happy. And if I fail to achieve it, its no big deal. And if I achieve it, its also no big deal.
A world with no meaning beyond itself, nothing needs to change – even our desire to change things! Just, you don’t take it so seriously.
You don’t take your desires seriously enough to suppress them.
D.T Suzuki was once asked what Zen enlightenment felt like – he said exactly like ordinary life, just two feet of the ground. You hold everything lightly, that’s all.
Do you finally get that? Its a subtle concept and people struggle with it. The final act of any principle, is to apply it to itself, which ends up destroying it, which leaves you where you started from, but transformed. “Same same but different”.
Take logic. We can apply it to the physical world, and come up with “truths”. However, moderns do not apply logic to the examination of logic. If they did, as Kant did, you find that logic destroys itself, and cannot provide “truths”.
But nobody dares to do this today. Where do we stand when we “destroy” logic? Where we started, using logic, but not being imprisoned by it, not taking it so seriously.
But this last, recursive step in the application of a principle is too subtle for most to grasp, or requires too much courage to take.
Yet it is the step that liberates one finally.
A world with no ultimate reality, does not mean a world without consistent patterns. It is a world of patterns, that we may observe. Even dreams, and illusions, have patterns.
And the patterns are consistent, as long as we observe them to be. There is no rule that these patterns must reproduce themselves. They just, so far, they have. At any moment, different patterns might emerge.
We call them scientific rules, but they are really just observed patterns, about whose continuing consistency, we can say nothing.
It is well known, that when one finally “understands” the universe, it cannot be put into words. Nothing has changed, but everything suddenly makes sense.
The snell of fried onions, is aa good an attempt as any 🙂
The reason it can’t be put into words, is because the universe has no meaning (it isn’t a symbol of anything), and it is only when we drop words (symbols), that we truly see it for the first time.
Wittgenstein’s philosophy was based on this insight. He tried to show, that there are no true philosophical problems. That words are bedeveling us.
He took that final, recursive step and applied philosophy, not to the world, but to itself. By showing the world was not a “problem” with a “solution”, the world “makes sense”.
In other words, the problem of life’s meaning was not solved – but transcended. It was, all along, a false question.
You are liberated from the question.
Wittgenstein was a deeply religious man, in his own way, a mystic.
I was used to seeing similar stuff to this in the heyday of the New Atheist movement in the late 2000s. It was pretty trendy at that time. But along came Social Justice and everyone is suddenly getting woke; once again it looks like the predictions of the demise of religion and religious thinking were premature. And this new mode of religious thinking is centred in and emanating from the more advanced and secular countries.
“Empty altars are populated by demons” – Ernst Junger, who converted to Catholicism in his old age
The New Atheist idiots opened the door for this woke cult.
I think that this is all very old actually.
Religions are no longer credible but the need to find some meaning to our existence is as strong as it always has been. During the 20th Century, people switched from religion to political militancy (especially communism) and later on to exotic Oriental philosphies that appeared to be more profound than traditional religions. Now it’s the turn of SJW/wokism. Something will substitute it as people also find out how shallow and unsatisfactory it is.
I didn’t pay attention to that New Atheist movement. I think that it was a predominantly British thing, if I’m not mistaken, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some people were actually trying to find meaning to their lives through militant atheism, which would be quite a funny thing.
In what sense “health”.
Physically, populations of the 21st century, are of course far more healthy than in any previous artistic epochs. And spiritually/mentally, the great artists were usually something less healthy than the average people in any society that you could find them.
Great art has been generally result of the most unhealthy (whether physically or mentally) people.
I just think about the often unhappy composers we listen to. Virgin Bruckner (when he was over 70 years old) was still trying to propose marriage to horrified teenage girls. Wagner was seducing everyone’s wife. Schumann jumped into the Rhein. Musorgsky drinks alcohol to his death. Sibelius tries to drink alcohol to death every week in his youth. Stories of Beethoven’s bizarre behaviour, use up hours of reading in his biographies .
Great visual artists are not necessarily healthier people than musicians. For example, in a house room in Arles, lived together two of the world’s greatest painters – Gauguin and van Gogh. Gauguin who later was sleeping with every 14 year old girl in Tahiti, and van Gogh who cuts off his ear after an argument with Gauguin.
There is perhaps sometimes a kind of unusual “health” in the sense of “personal vitality” in people who can create great art. For example, that Victor Hugo has seduced multiple hundreds of women, can perhaps have been some sign of the energy he also had for inventing so many stories (perhaps the writing and sex addiction, were both collateral effects of a common profligacy).
But it’s not controversial to notice that a significant amount of great art requires mental illness, or at best personality disorders, and you could not imagine a normal healthy person could produce many of those achievements. For example, Wagnerian opera is probably inconceivable without narcissistic personality disorder; Tchaikovsky symphonies probably require bipolar disorder to write – and I’m not sure what level of mental diseases you would need to paint like Hieronymus Bosch.
To improve its sound, you could just keep the same Kawai keyboard and use its MIDI-out?
I would run MIDI-out to an audio interface (to plug to your computer). Then you can use a VST (Garritan CFX Lite, Ravenscroft, etc) for the piano samples. And then connect audio interface to studio monitors.
Downside is that you would need to turn on your computer whenever you want to play, and you have a lot of wires. So it’s more inconvenient that you have to turn on computer and VST before you play (compared to just turning on digital piano), and your music room will look more nerdy.
But costs would be very low compared to upgrading to a new digital piano:
VST software: $100
Audio interface: $100 (assuming you don’t have one)
Studio monitors: $500-$2000 (assuming you don’t have good ones you use already)
lol, perhaps such as territories/peoples encroached east of Urals which were just as rightfully their own as Australia was rightfully British own 🙂
I think that’s very debatable. There’s good evidence that hunter-gatherers were healthier than modern humans(and during the immediate effects of pollution during the early 19th century, I believe that life expectancies dropped even below medieval averages).
https://www.scientificeuropean.co.uk/were-hunter-gatherers-healthier-than-the-modern-humans/
afaik only manic depressiveness has been correlated with creativity.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181877/
True. Though I do wonder if the economies of various parts of Austria-Hungary actually made these territories’ economies as interconnected as the economies of various Soviet SSRs were.
Agreed. Also, for what it’s worth, I suspect that Yanukovych would have been willing to let Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr go if doing this was actually necessary in order for him to secure control over Kiev. Kiev in such a scenario might have been in a state of permanent or at least semi-permanent lockdown, though. And of course Yanukovych might have had to have loyal troops from eastern and/or southern Ukraine be constantly stationed to the west of Kiev in order to prevent any western Ukrainian assault on Kiev.
BTW, off-topic, but what exactly makes you think that, had it survived, the Russian Provisional Government would have actually given an autonomous Ukraine control over Novorossiya? After all, most of Novorossiya was only slightly more than half Ukrainian during this time–and even less than that if we’re talking about Ukrainophones as opposed to ethnic Ukrainians. Of course, a lot of Novorossiya’s minorities were not Russians (though Russians were the largest minority in Novorossiya, I think) but rather Jews, Germans, Greeks, Bulgarians, et cetera.
I was discussing the social health of a society. Even if some of those artists were themselves degenerates, they were still products of a healthy society and their artistic expression reflected this despite their personal problems.
If the Provisional Government had signed a peace treaty with Germany (probably a condition for its survival) it would have been forced to do so.
AFAIK, though, the German government initially (in December 1917) offered Russia milder peace terms than that–specifically only the loss of Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and perhaps Riga. So, the Russian Provisional Government could have probably avoided losing Ukraine. However, even if this wouldn’t have actually been the case, any treaty that it would have signed with Germany would have likely been nullified by any subsequent treaty that the victorious Entente/Allies would have signed with Germany–thus allowing Russia to reclaim Ukraine and to draw the borders of an autonomous Ukraine wherever it would have saw fit to do so.
This whole art discussion is ludicrous and bizarre, its not like every artists has been driven by similar impulses which can neatly categorised into healthy or not healthy, and the motivations for creating art have wildly varied depending on epoch. Theres a great difference between medieval religious art that was mainly produced by craftsmen who were members of guilds and 19th century virtuosos. Heck even Bach would have been impossibility before the reformation, for medieval Christians were categorically against instrumental church music.
Yes its true that modern art often sucks, but maybe its because there is lack of genuine passion and inspiration in modern society, compared to 19th century, everything seems more mundane and death is not very present, even Soviet society of Stalin and Lenin had quite many interesting artists and composers, but Im not sure of root reasons for the present situation, just that this health discussion is more or less pointless.
They were, Austria and Czechia had most of the industry, especially Czechia, and they were much more urbanised than Kingdom of Hungary, which was the breadbasket of the empire, and had almost no industry outside of the Budapest. Vienna the capital of the empire of 50 million, had population of 2 million, but after the war it became a capital of country of just 6 million people.
just that its highly unlikely that there is one specific gene that makes us to feel desire for something.
Fixed a typo
https://twitter.com/jetvir/status/1336726110747435008
Clearly just some fragile white gora Punjabis trying to restore their racial dominance. Shame on them.
Here is how real Indians look like
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/C5PWGC/madurai-tamil-nadu-C5PWGC.jpg
https://dz01iyojmxk8t.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/23142322/pasted-image-0-4.jpg
See how the true Bharati dont look at all like those Punjabi quislings who collaborated with the cursed Britishers in subjugation of proud and dark Indian folk.
To others
Really most people of India are much darker than most Indians of the west, or those in movies, media or among elites. Except the Punjabis, Himachalis and Kashmiris. They are quite fair.
Restore?
The Indus Sarasvati civilization was a beautiful and peaceful culture.
https://www.harappa.com/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/10993459_10153211671674846_1772597225453076346_n.jpg?itok=Fcyz7VpV
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e2/db/0d/e2db0d162ce4f1a27a600077b45367f4.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1f/6f/2e/1f6f2e8488cf3eb280cf0c3e321012d4.jpg
Then a terrible thing happened: barbaric white skinned hordes swarmed the whole place raping, burning and pillaging…
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/e5/a6/3d/e5a63ddf50725207fd693f76803bdb16.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eo2E9wLXEAA0Wsf?format=jpg&name=medium
https://therationalhindu.com/a-critical-appraisal-of-narasimhan-et-al-2018-biorxiv-a1099ef0e289
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/292581v1
https://images.milaap.org/milaap/image/upload/v1539354678/production/images/campaign/50895/irulight_rjbf9k_1539354797.png?enhance=true&format=jpg&height=315&mode=fit&width=420
https://scroll.in/article/893308/why-hindutva-is-out-of-steppe-with-new-discoveries-about-the-indus-valley-people
TL;DR the Northern India populations are descendants of invaders who destroyed a beautiful civilization built by Proud Black People. These evil pale skinned steppe invaders subjugated the gentle dark skinned folks or forced them to flee South. Sime of the Proud Black People ended-up surviving by catching rats and snakes
The pale faced colonialists then imposed their evil genocidal religious caste system upon the Native Bharats. The offspring of the white northerner colonizers are still walking around with swords, aggressively attacking local democratically elected governments and overall behaving like the barbarians they are!
Sher Singh and the like must check their privilege.
gunpowder||
Get ready for socialism or get ready to fight against it.
https://internationalman.com/articles/you-will-own-nothing-and-you-will-be-happy/
I thought you only used swords
https://i.imgur.com/bcoatTO.jpg
Yep, I totally agree with you on that point.
Society doesn’t need less education, it just needs less propaganda, which is what most “education” is actually dressed up to be.
Based Modiji dabbing on Sikh Saboteurs. Remember the Bharat Bandh? Turns out it was just Punjab and Haryana chimping out. Most people are not aware that the Jatt Sikhs own a huge portion of Punjab’s land with dalits owning less than 1% (despite being 1/3rd the population). This is the revolt of the privileged and I’m glad Modiji is bulldozing the jattoids.
Mm, result of Brit policies.
Sikh Panth gave land to everyone||
Bulldozing?
Gov already agreed to amendments
Announced there’ll be no crackdowns
Other states marching to Delhi
Avg farming household makes 90 usd monthly..
That’s with others listed as farmers for income tax, real # lower.
Punjabi Dalits make fun of Brahmins from elsewhere lol.
These laws have cratered incomes, and done nothing else on state level.
You’re just racist, Jats are not gonna stop bullying you, kid.
https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/kabdtj/the_farming_laws_that_the_bjp_are_pushing_for/
https://preview.redd.it/oeopri626a461.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=13fc93f9096ae11cb0e1e3e4daa250e09dc9db56
https://twitter.com/Devinder_Sharma/status/1336568892450168832?s=20
India has 1/7th the procurement facilities it needs.
https://twitter.com/ShekharGupta/status/1336301278473854976
https://www.sikh24.com/2020/12/09/will-join-farmers-protest-at-delhi-border-if-need-arises-akal-takht-sahib-jathedar/
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/akal-takht-sgpc-disapprove-delhi-hc-judgement-on-homosexuality/story-WIkCiNga3zilDXnWk8dOtJ.html
https://ichef-bbci-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/695/cpsprodpb/56DC/production/_115763222_farmer.jpg
https://www.sikh24.com/2020/12/11/december-10-latest-developments-from-the-farmers-protest-against-anti-farm-laws-of-the-bjp/
https://twitter.com/amaanbali/status/1337005480825110528?s=20
Souja Souja Sohn Shahrney Bordaran Te Kharaa Sardar Gaddh Ke
Sleep beautiful city woman, the Sardar (Sikh) is holding the border
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/03/f5/4303f528e145afe549f788fe797bb80e.jpg
So you gonna come meet me in Delhi Thulean?
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
lol, Abhinav Prakash has already exposed this lie. Most of the landgrabs happened in the wake of the green revolution. The jattoids are not victims. They are the privileged class fighting to keep their ill-gotten gains that they stole from poorer and less empowered communities.
This is a revolt of the privileged farmers. Most people aren’t even aware that of the agricultural workers in India, a majority are landless labourers. Even among the farmers, the typical farmsize has shrunk for decades. Punjab has the highest agricultural income in all of India (Haryana is the 2nd) and gets massive subsidies for wheat and rice despite being quite arid. It is idiotic yet successive governments have done this precisely for fear of mobilisation by the rich and powerful segments in these societies. It has to end and Modiji is the man to do it.
Jattoids are no victims.
I do think that too much education is destructive to society. Especially too much university education. You end up with too many people whose expectations have been raised too high. When they don’t get the high-paying high-status jobs that they expected they become disaffected and cause huge social problems.
We have a particular problem with an over-production of lawyers.
I think that’s always been the case. A major function of education has always been to indoctrinate children into the ruling ideology. Conservatives are upset today because it’s no longer their ideology that is being indoctrinated into children. They liked the good old days when education was propaganda, but it was their propaganda.
I’m not sure we should say Quattrocento and Cinquecento was a socially healthy Italy – was the universe described by Machiavelli on the political level. And compared to later centuries, would be considered a very brutal and violent life not just between, but also inside city states. Yet inside these Italian cities, full of constant political problems – came history’s most developed and beautiful flowering in visual culture.
The greatest art and literature of any people in world history, was created in Classical Athens. Yet in Classical Athens, half of the population were slaves, and it was a time of every kind of disaster, regular fratricidal wars among neighbours, plagues, etc. During the rule of Thirty Tyrants in Athens, executed proportionally more citizens in their political repressions, than Stalin in 1930s Soviet Union.
What about the theme of great 19th century writers like Flaubert, Zola or Dickens, Baudelaire?
Tragic moments in Flaubert’s writing, when he writing about the life of prostitutes, and lack of empathy of bourgeoisie for others. Zola about drunks and poverty and its hereditary cycle. In Baudelaire about the faces of street orphans, .etc.
In socially healthy Paris or London, without all this sadness and poverty – what would Baudelaire write about?
Yes I think this is a good point you wrote here. Probably our insulation from death is one of the things which encourages less tragic or serious dimension in much of current art and culture. (Tragedy, which was considered the highest genre of art in former ages.) Although it’s just another factor to add to a long list.
In modern history, new genre of art are usually introduced by a technological change, and the genre has an internal history, and does become exhausted according to its own cycle.
For example, the novel rises across the 19th century, and is exhausted in the early 20th century. Cinema has similar short artistic golden age, and was becoming exhausted by the 1970s-80s.
Jazz music was really short in its golden age, starting in the 1920s – by the 1980s it was becoming something you put inside a museum.
Much of the excitement people had about painting, was killed by a technological change – photography, and the history of painting after photography is about trying every idea to be different from the mere mimesis which was now occupied by photography.